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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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W. CLARK RUSSELL. 


17 TO 27 VaNdeW/tef^ St 

’iJiEWyo^K:^ 




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The Seaside Library. 

rOCKiCT EDITION. 


NO. PaiCE. 

1 Yolande. By Williana Black ~'0 

2 Molly Bawii. By “The Duchess” 20 

Z The Mill ou tiie Floss. By Ueorye Eliot 20 

4 Uuder T’.vo Flags. By ’‘Ouida ” 20 

5 Admiral's Ward. By Mrs. Alexander.. 20 

6 Portia. By ” The Duchess’' 20 

7 File No. liS. By Emile Gaboriau 20 

8 East Lynne. By Mrs. Hemy Wood .... 2t) 

9 Wanda. By “ Ouida ” 20 

10 The Old Curiosity Shop. By Dielceng. 20 

11 John Halifa.x, Gentleman. Miss Mulock 20 

12 Other People’s Money. By Giiberiau. 20 

13 Eyre’s AcJiuittal. By Helen B. Mathers 10.. 

14 Airy Fairy Jjilian. By •* Tlie Ducliess ” 20 

15 Jmie Eyre. By Charlotte Brout4 20 

16 Phyllis. By “ The Duchess ” 20 

17 Tltie Wooing CL By Mrs. Alexander... 20 

18 Shaudon Bells. By William Black 20 

19 Her Mother’s Sin. By the Author of 

“ Dora Thorne 20 

20 Within an Inch of His Life. By Emile 

Gaboriau 20 

21 Sunrise. By William Black 20 

22 Darid Copperfield. Dickens. Vxil. I.. 20 

22 David Copperlield. Dickens. Vol. II. 20 

23 APrinces-s of Thulo- By William Black 20 

24 Pickwick Papers. Dickens. Vol. I... 20 
24 Pickwick Papers. Dickens. Vol. II.. 20 
2.) Mrs. Geoffrey. By ** The Duehess"” ... 20 

26 Blonsieur Lecoq. By Gaboriau. Vol. L 20 
.26 Monsieur Lecoq. By Gaboriau. Vol. II. 20 

27 Van! tv Fa ih. By William .M. Thackeray 20 

28 Ivanhoe. B.V Walter Scott 20 

29 Beauty’s Daughters. “ The Duchess ” 20. 
,30 Faith ami Uufaith. By “ The Duchess ” 20 

31 3Iidd!emareh. By George Eliot 20 

32 The Land Leaguers. Anthony Trollope 20 
;I3 The Clique of Gold. By Emile Gaboriau 20 
34 Datiiel Deronda. By George Eliot ... SO 
3) Lady Audley’s Secret. Miss Braddon 20 


36 Adam Bede By George Eliot 20 

37 Nicholas Nickleby. By Charles Dickens 30 

38 The VV^idow Ijerbuge. By Gaboriau.. 20 

39 III Silk Attire. By-William Black,-.-.-.-.- 20 

40 The Last Days of Pompeii. By Sir E. 

Bulwer Lytton 20 

41 v/iiver TwisL By Charles Dickens .. .. 20 

42 llomola. By George Eliot 20 


43 The Mystery of Orcival. Gaboriau..,. 20 

44 Macleod of Dare. By William Black. . 20 

45 A Little Pilgrim, By Mrs. Oliphant. . . 10 

46 Very Hard Cash. By Charles Reade. . 20 

47 Altibra Peto. By Laurence Oliphant. . 20 

48 Thicker Than Water. By James Payn . 20 

49 That Beautiful Wretch. By Black... 20 

50 The Sti’ange Adventures of a Phaeton. 


B.y William Black 20 

51 Dora Thorne. By the Author of “ Her 

Mothei-‘s Sin ” 20 

5‘2 Tlie New Magdalen. Bv Wilkie Collins. 20 
.53 The Story of Ida. By Francesca 10 


54 A Broken Wedding-Ring. B}^ the Au- 
thor of “ Dora Thorne ’’ 

.55 The Three Guardsmen. By Dumas. . . . 

56 Phantom Fortune. Miss Braddon.. . . 

57 Shirley. By Charlotte Bronte. 


NO. PRICE. 

58 By the Gate of the Sea. D. C. Murray 10 

59 Vice Ver.sa. By F. Anstey . 20 

00 The Last of the MohkraJis. Cooper,. 20 

61 Gliarleile Tenqsle. By Mi's. Row son. 10 

62 'I'lie Executor, By Mrs. AleAiauder. . 20 

63 Tlie -Spy. By J. Peiihnore Coopei'. , . 20 

64 A Miudeii Fair. ByGliarles Gihbou. . .’'0 

65 Back to tlicOld Home. By M. C. Hay lO 

66 The Jiomauce of a Poor Young Man. 

By Octave Feuillet 10 

67 Lorna Doone. Bi' IL D. Black moi*e.. 30 

68 A Queen Amongst Women. By the 

Author of ‘•JJoia TJioi-ne’’.- 10 

69 Madolin’s Lover, By the Author of 

Dora Tliorne 20 

70 White Wings. By William Black 20 

71 A Struggle for Fame. Mrs. Riddell.. 20 

72 Old Mycidellou’s Mone}'. B^- Bl. C. Ha.y 20 

73 Redeemed by Love. By the Author of 


” Dora Thorne ” .v 20 

7'4 Aurora Floyd. By Miss BI. E. Braddon 20 

75 Twenty Years After. By Dumas. . . 20 

76 Wife ill Name Only. By the Author of 

“ Dora Thorne ” 20 

77 A Tale of Two Cities. B.y,Dit-keus 2u 

78 Bladcap Violet. B3' Williani Black... 20 

79 Wedded and Parted, By the Author 

of Dora Tliorne ” 10 

SO June. By Mrs. Forrester 20 

81 A Daughter of Heth. By Win. Black. 20 

82 Sealed Lips. By J’. Du Boisgobey . , . 20 

83 A Strange Story. Buhver Lytton 20 

84 Hard Times. By Charles DieUens... 20 
;S5 A Sea Queen. By W. Clark Russell.. 20 

86 Belinda. By Rlioda Brougliton 20 

87 Dick Sand ; or, A Captain at Fifteen. 

By Jules Verne 20 


68 The Privateersnian. Captain Blarryat 20 

89 Tlie Red Eric. By R. Bl. Baliaiityiie. 10 

90 Ernest Blaltraveix Buhver Lytton . . 20 

91 Barnaby Riidge. By Charles Dickens. 30 

92 Lord I A line's Choice. By the Author 

of “ Dora Thome ” 20 

9.3 Antlmny Trollope’s Autobiograplij^ . 20 

94 IJttle Dorrit. 63' Charles Dickens. . . 30 

95 The Fire Brigade. R. BI. BalUuityiie 10 

96 Erling the Bold. By R. BI. Ballaiit.Mie 10 

97 All ill a. Garden Fair. Waller Besniit.. 20 

98 A Woman-Hater. B3’ Charles Reade. 20 


99 Barbara s History. A. B. Edwards. . . 20 

100 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. By 

Jules Verne 20 

101 Second Thoughts. Rhoda Broughton 20 

102 The Blooiistone. By Wilkie Collins.. . 30 

103 Rose Fleming, B3' Dora Russell 10 

104 The Coral Pin. By F. Du Boi8gohe3*. 30 

105 A Noble Wife. By John Saunders 20 

106 Bleak House. By Cliarles Dickens. . . 40 

107 Domhey and Son. Charles Dickens. . 40 

108 The Cricket on the Hearth, and Doctor 

Blarigold. Bx' Charles Dickens 10 

100 Little Loo. B.v W. Clark Russell 20 

110 Under the Red Flag. By Bliss Braddon 10 

111 The IJttle School-Master Blark. By 

J. H. Short hou'te . : 10 

112 The AVaters of Blarah. B3' John Hill 20 


20 
20 
20 
20 

(This List is Continued on Third Page of Cover.) 


■sssrr 


ROOe THE GALLEY FIRE 


y 

By W. CLAEK RUSSELL, 



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NEW YORK: 

GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 


17 TO 27' Yandewater Street. 





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ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE 


These stories and sketches originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph. No 
further preface to them is needed than this statement; for the title under 
v/hich they are collected will fitly express their character, if the reader can 
imagine himself one of an audience, in a cold dog-watch, listening to the yarns 
of a man who has planted himself in the galley, where he delivers his mem- 
ories and notions to the little company who have gathered round to listen. 


A DANCE AT 8EA. 

A LABGE Australian passenger ship, homeward bound from Syd- 
ney, New South Wales, lay becalmed in about two degrees south of 
the line. She had carried the trade-wind lo that point, but it had 
failed her at daybreak, and all day long she had hung upon the 
whitish-blue of the oil-smooth sea, slightly leaning with- the swell 
that ran through the bosom of the deep with the regularity ot a 
restful respiration, her white canvas softly beating against the yel- 
low masts, which were radiant with lines of fire, and the water bub- 
bling like a fountain under her counter, as the stern of the great 
fabric was depressed by the heave of the swell under the bows. 

She was tolerably well crowded with human beings, carrying a 
large number of passengers in the cuddy and steerage, and some 
thirty or forty people in the ’tween-decks. The poop was sheltered 
by an awning, and under it, seated on chairs or lounging upon the 
skylights and the hen-coops, were such of the passengers as were 
privileged lo use that portion of the decks, reading, talking, smok- 
ing, casting languid eyes upon the breathless ocean; ladies fanning 
themselves, gentlemen in the airiest possible costumes, and at the 
extremity of the shadowed deck the steersman grasping the wheel, 
his figure in the pouring vertical sunshine rising and falling against 
the rich sapphire of the tropical heavens with the swaying of the 
ship, and the brilliant brass of the binnacle-hood flashing into 
flames as it slowly lifted and sank under the eyes of the burning 
luminary. 

The quarter-deck was partially sheltered by the folds of the main- 
sail, which hung from the great yard in the grip of the leech-lines; 
and there, wherever the shadows rested, congregated the steerage 
and 'tween-deck passengers, lolling, red-faced and open -breasted. 
In one place a knot of women with" children gathered about them; 


4 


BOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


in another a number of men in their shirt-sleeves sprawling in many 
postures; and, forward, glimpses of Jack could be caught at work 
at some job in the waist, or on the forecastle, or in the shadow of 
the break of his big parlor, or popping his head through the scut- 
tle, with a sooty inverted pipe between his teeth, to have a look 
around him, or enjoying a wash-down, stripped to the hips, in a 
bucket of salt-water, screened from the passengers’ eyes by the gal- 
ley; while the live stock in the long-boat filled the air that way with 
rumbling and squeaking noises, which harmonized with the hoarse 
pipes of the boatswain standing betwixt the knight-heads and bawl- 
ing instructions to a couple of ordinary seamen on the foretop-sail 
yard. 

The day passed with never so much as a shadow upon the sea to 
give the officer on duty an excuse to sing out to the watch. But 
nobody could reasonably complain. The ship had rushed grandly 
into this stagnant ocean under topmast and top-gallant studding- 
sails, and for days and days the roar of foam speeding furiously past 
and the thunder of the trade-wind sweeping into the spacious con- 
cavities of the gleaming cloths had been familiar sounds. This 
calm was only like giving the shif|||||Hittle breathing-time. Besides, 
it would directly serve a very pleasant purpose then in hand, which 

as simply this: it was the birthday of the daughter of one of the 
passengers, a rich Australian gentleman. The girl was pretty, 
charming in manners, and universally liked; indeed, four gentle- 
men were seriously in love with her, and one of these had suggested 
that they should celebrate the occasion by a dance. The skipper 
came promptly into the scheme, and so did the rich Australian 
papa, who merely stipulated that the dance should be general from 
one end of the ship to the other, and that he should be at the charge 
of enough wine to keep the heels of the forecastle and ’tween-decks 
nimble and up to the mark. They could dance in a calm like this, 
and the light and regular swell would be rather a help than a hin- 
derance, as the heave of the deck should put additional alacrity into 
the swing of a waltz or the stampede of a galop round the hen-coops 
and hatchway. They could muster a little music: a flute, a con- 
certina, and two fiddles, and they also had the cuddy piano. So all 
that was needful for a sea-ball was at hand, and in the second dog- 
'watch, before the sun went down, they began to prepare for the 
festivity. There would be a bright moon, and the question whether 
they should dance iu its light, like the Buffalo girls, or keep the 
awning spread, had been earnestly debated at luncheon and dinner. 
It was decided, however, to let the awning stand— first, because it 
would keep the dew from the deck ; and, secondly, because the lan- 
terns would show to advantage in its shadow. 

At the appointed time, therefore, the sailors came along to rig up 
the lanterns, as many as they had— side-lights, cabin-lamps, and the 
like. Any departure from regular routine^ delights Jack, and his 
grin is never broader nor his Whispered jokes more explosive than at. 
such times. Besides, he was to dance presently, and he tumbled 
through the preparations like a man in a hurry to enjoy himself. 
The sun went down — a mass of glorious splendor— flinging up the 
glass-smooth water until the western horizon all that way looked to 
be twenty leagues distant, and shedding a haze of purple gold tar ta 


IIOUI^D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


5 


the eastward ot the zenith that tinted the mightj expanse of ocean 
with a delicate crimson tvhich yielded fast to the eager stride of the 
tropical night, though darkness was in the east, and the large tremu- 
lous silver stars were sparkling upon its deep ebony bosom, and the 
white snow-like moon was floating in the pure deep shadows in the 
south and whitening the water with a slender stream of icy light, 
when the west was still ardent with the fires of the vanished day- 
beam. 

The cool of the night was immediately felt in the air, and now' 
the circling draughts thrown down upon the decks by every flap of 
the lower canvas could be felt and enjoyed. With the row of lan- 
terns along the poop, here a red and there a green one, mingling 
with the yellow radiance of the other lamps, the lustrous pearl of 
the moonlight on the main deck and forecastle, and the drowsily- 
flapping sails lifting their pale heights to the stars, the ship was a 
picturesque object indeed. The musicians posted themselves against 
the rail at the break of the poop, so that all hands could hear their 
strains and dance to them ; and, everything being ready, they dashed, 
into a waltz, keeping very good time, and accompanied (after a- 
fashion) by the piano in the cuddy, the notes ot wdiich rose very 
clearly through the open skyligh||. Aft, of course, there was the 
necessary decorum, ladies and gt^lemen ‘gliding over the smooth 
planking and skimming along with great propriety, and with a 
more or less tolerable exhibition of art. But on the main deck and 
forecastle shore customs were not very strictly adhered to. Women 
danced with women, men with men; the children hopped to and 
fro, clapping their hands and getting in the way; here and there a 
sailor would be showing off his paces in a lonely dance, slapping the 
deck with his heels in a hornpipe without the least reference to the 
music, which, so long as it kept going, was all the same to him. no 
matter what dances it played. The steward and his mates bustled 
about with wine and glasses; but the wine was light, and Jack, and 
many of the steerage and ’tween deck passengers loo, no doubt, 
were seasoned, and the mild refreshment did no further mischief 
than impart a sense of festivity. 

They say, and 1 can well believe, that a prettier sight w^as never 
seen than all those people dancing, and laughing, and enjoying 
themselves on the decks of that becalmed and sleeping Australian 
vessel. You must figure yourself taking your stand on one of the 
poop-ladders, say, clear of the awning, where, looking aft, you 
could see the row of lanterns and the dancers shifting their colors 
as they swept round into the rays ot the green and red lamps, with 
little floods, of moonlight here and there upon the deck under the 
awning; and beyond, the man at the wheel, standing there like a 
bronze figure, the binnacle lamp softly touching his shape with 
light, and making his image clear against the stars which slowly 
slided to and fro past him; or where, looking forward, you com- 
manded the vessel to the very eyes of her, whence the great bow- 
sprit and long jib-booms forked into the gloom like a spear pointed 
by a giant, on which the row of jibs glimmered as they soared into 
tlVj pale obscurity. On those decks the moonlight lay broad; but 
in places shone a yellow light which, with the moonshine, threw 
twin shadows upon the silvered planks, and the shadows of the rig- 


6 


BOUND THE GALLEY ITKE 


ging were sharp and black, and scored the sails as though they were 
Tuled with lines of Indian-ink. The crowd of big spare booms over 
the galley, the outline of the huge windlass barrel under the fore- 
castle, the solid masts piercing the night and bearing on high their 
vast stretches of symmetrical canvas, from which an occasional 
shower of dew would fall when the sails came in to the masts, 
loomed large and vague in the moonlight; there was something of 
shadowiness, too, in the figures of the dancers as they swayed in 
crowds between the bulwarks, and frolicked on the forecastle, with 
frequent bursts of hearty laughter and loud calls, w’^hich w'ere 
tlirowm back in light echoes from the lofty sails. 

^ The musicians varied the dances often, but it was all one to the 
§ailors and the steerage passengers, and while the cudd}' people 
were staidly stalking through quadrilles or decorously gyrating in 
waltzes or hopping gravely through a mazurka, the company on the 
main deck kept steadily to galops and polkas— this last, a beloved 
dance among sailors — floundering against each other, capsizing over 
the children, spinning around the main hatch and through the gah 
ley, and awaking the echoes of the forecastle with their active toe- 
ing and heeling. 

But it was impossible to look^ abroad upon the vast and vague 
distances of the dark sea, upon whose horizon, down to the very 
water’s edge, the stars were shining like fire-flies, without a ming- 
ling of melancholy in the thoughts. How small a speck that ship 
made in the midst of the lonely leagues of ocean! how minute a 
theater sufficed for the revelry of near upon two hundred human 
souls! The contrast between the sounds in the vessel and the deep. 
silence upon the sea was defined to a degree such as no pen could 
give expression to. The silence was like the night itself, a near and 
impervious envelopment which absorbed the shouts and laughter of 
the dancers as a stone flung at a mound of snow vanishes in it. 
The water against the ship’s side looked thick and black and slug- 
gish as liquid pitch, but now and again the wash of the swell would 
set it on fire with phosphorus, that poured away under the surface 
in bright, illuminated clouds, which sparkled and faded until they 
vanished utterly and the water was black again. Once an exclama- 
tion from the second mate, who was looking over the rail at the sea, 
brought several dancers to his side, and, following the indication of 
his outstretched finger, they perceived a fier}'^ oval shape sneaking 
stealthily along toward the bows of the ship. “ Only a shark, 
ladies, hoping that some of us may waltz ourselves overboard;” 
and, merrily laughing, the dancers drew away and fell to their pranc- 
ings afresh. 

But presently, and in the midst of all this gayety, the stream af 
moonlight in the southw'est sea— a reflection that had hunir like a 
cone of solid silver without a breath to tarnish the exquisite polish 
of its surface — trembled, and the water on either hand of it took a 
deeper shadow. Overhead the sails were silent, and a faint air 
streamed athwart the poop under the awning. The skipper, a tine- 
looking, hearty seaman, swung himself abreast of the officer in 
charge, with his arm still clasning the w’aist of his partner, said 
something in a low voice, atid whisked off again. The officer 


HOUND THE CtALLEY FIRE. 


IV 

t 


walked to the break of the poop, and his loud cry starlled the 
dancers on the main deck for a moment : 

“ Trim sail, the watch I Lay aft, some hands, and man the star- 
board main braces. Wheel, there; how’s her head?” 

“ North-weat-by -north, sir.” 

And now some new strains were added to those produced by the 
musicians. The rough ■voices of seamen rounding in the braces 
rose harshly, and the measures of the dance music were somewhat 
perplexed by the sharp cries of “ Belay all that!” “ Haul taut t'.> 
wind’ardl” “ Too muchtheroyal yard; slacken a bitlo leeward!” 
But the dancers, to whose ears those cries were as familiar as.their 
lingers were to their eyes, went on footing it bravely. The decks 
grew steady and slightly inclined; the sails had fallen asleep, and 
there was not a stir among the pallid folds; a pleasant sound of 
tinkling water came up from the ship’s side, and under the counter 
a narrow wake of green lire crawled away, with little eddies of foam 
twinkling among the ghastly sparkles of the phosphorus. 

But the musicians began to slacken ; the piano had given over, 
and Jack had lighted his pipe forward, and was beginning to re- 
member that his watch below would be up in two hours. By and 
by a bell was rung in the cuddy, and those who looked through 
th^kylight saw that the grog and the biscuits were on the tabic. 
Tire music ended suddenly, and the fiddlers and the others gathered 
round the cuddy-door, where they were received by the steward, 
who handed them each a glass of liquor. In twos and threes the, 
steerage and ’tween-deck passengers went below, and in halt an 
hour the ship’s decks were deserted save by the steersman, the 
pacing officer of the watch, and some dark figures leaning over the 
head-rail, visible from the poop under the arched foot of the fore- 
sail. Up through the booby and main hatches would come fitfully 
the sound of a child crying, or a woman’s voice talking low% or 
the growling hum of men; otherwise the silence was profound, the 
ship like a phantom in the moonlight, and nothing audible aloft but 
the moan of the tropical night breeze in the rigging, with now and 
again the creak of a sheave as the light swing of the swell hove the 
great ship very gently to windward, and brought an extra strain upon 
the taut sheets. 


GOING ALOFT. 

Some time ago, when the Queen was at Osborne, her Majesty 
visited a troop-ship in her yacht the Alberta. Her Majesty’s ship 
Hector, lying in Cowes Roads, manned yards in honor of the royal 
presence. One of the men got as high as the main truck and stood 
upon it. The main truck is a small circular platform— varying in 
diameter, of course, according to the size of the ship — fixed on the 
royal-mast head, the highest point of the mast. Sometimes it has 
holes in it, through which halyards are rove for hoisting flags. 
The trucks of the Hector, I was told, are furnished with iron staffs, 
so that the sailor who stood on the main truck had something to lay 
bold of. But this diminishes nothing of the wonder of the feat. The 
nerve required coolly to stand upon a small circumference at a pro- 


ROUisD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


8 

digious elevation is one thing; the more extraordinary feature of 
that achievement lies, it would strike a landsman, in the man’s get- 
ting over and on to the truck, and then kneeling and swinging him- 
self off it, and down upon the royal rigging. In the fine old song 
of the “ Leap for Life,” the skipper’s son gets ujjon the main truck 
and stands there, holding on with his eyelids. To save his life he 
is ordered to jump, and the dog follows him overboard and picks 
him up. The order to that boy was .a sensible one, for though it is 
perfectly true that he had managed to get upon the truck, it was 
really impossible that he should get oft it without falling. 

In truth, going aloft is one of^ the hardest parts of the sea life at 
the first start. Seamen who were active, courageous men enough, 
have told me that it look them months to vanquish their nervous- 
ness; and many a young fellow has given up the sea after the first 
voyage simply because he never could overcome the purely physical 
Infirmity of giddiness tlie moment he had his feet in the ratlines. 
In ” Redburn,” one of Herman Meri vale’s delightful sea tales, this 
weakness is illustrated in an incident narrated with wonderful 
power. A young man, named Harry Bolton, ships tor the return 
voyage from Liverpool. He is rated as an ordinary seaman, but his 
friend notices that when any work has to be done aloft, Harry is 
always busy about the belaying pins, making fast the clew-li^s, 
etc. At last he candidly owns to his friend that he has made a 
private trial of it, and that he cannot go aloft ; that his nerves would 
not allow' of it. But this does not save him. One day the mate 
ordered him to mount to the main truck and unreeve the short sig- 
nal halyards. "Where the ends of the halyards came is not stated, 
but one might think that the royal yard would have been high 
enough for the unfortunate young man to have clambered, even it 
the cross-trees would not have done. Be this as it may, Harry 
Bolton hesitates, is rope’s-ended by the mate, finally springs into 
the main-rigging and gets as high as the maintop. "Wlien there he 
looks down, and his heart instantly fails him. The pitiless mate 
thereupon orders a Dutch sailor to follow and help him up, w hich 
the Dutchman does with his head, butting at the base of his back 
and hoisting him along in that way. ” Needs must,” continues 
the narrator, ” when the devil drives;’ and higher and highef, 
with Max bumping him at every step, w^ent my unfortunate friend. 
At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin sijrnal halyards — 
scarcely bigger than common twine— were flying in the wind. ‘ Un- 
reeve.’ cried the mate. 1 saw Harry’s arm stretched out— his legs 
seemed shakingin the rigging, even to us dowui on deck; and^at last, 
thank heaven! the deed was done. He came down pale as death, 
with bloodshot eyes and every limb qtiiveripg.” 

Sailors will know there is no exaggeration in all this. Some be- 
ginners will run up aloft like monkeys; others will get into the 
shrouds and stand there, hanging back and looking up, and holding 
on as if they meant, to use an old sea phrase, to squeeze all the tar 
out of the ropes. There is not, perhaps, any worse cruelty prac- 
ticed on board ship than that of driving a nervous lad aloft. In 
fornier times there was a custom called pricking — a sailor got behind 
a hoy and forced him up by digging into him wdth a pin or a 
” pricker.” It is, perliaps, scarcely wmith while nowadays to sper.k 


liOU^D THE GALLEY FIliE. 


9' 


of such liiiuiis — the sailing-ship is dying out, and the steamer gives 
but little work to do aloft; but there are few men who have fol- 
lowed the sea who cd,nnot recall cases of exquisite suffering in nerv- 
ous boys hurried and pricked and thrust up the rigging. One in- 
stance 1 remember — that of a lad of thirteen, who was shipped in 
an Australian port. He was ordered on to the fore-ro>?al yard along 
with another youngster. It was his first journey up the masts, and 
when he was halt-way up the shrouds he came to a dead stop. The 
boatswain sung out to him to look alive and go on. The poor little 
chap, with shaking hands and a face like the foam alongside, footed 
it as high as the futtock shrouvis, where he halted looking up at the 
overhanging platform of the top. “ Over you go!” shouted the 
boatswain from the forecastle. “ I can’t sir! indeed 1 can’t, sir!”’ 
cried the little fellow, piteously. ‘‘ We’ll see about that,” said the 
boatswain, and called to an ordinary seaman to help him up. This 
youth was a brute, and when he reached the clinging bo}" he began 
to pinch him in the legs, and pulled out his sheath-knife and threat- 
ened to stab him if lie did not go over the top. It was a big top; 
the angle of the mast — the wind being abaft tlie beam — was a small 
one, and the futtock shrouds stretched away from the boy like the 
rib of an open umbrella from the stick. The miserable litile fellow, 
terrified bj’’ the sight of the knife behind him, laid hold of the long 
irons and made a swing witu his legs at the ratlines, missed them, 
vibrated a moment or two like a pendulum, and then dropped past 
the outstretched hand of the sailor below him like a flash, striking, 
the shrouds and rebounding as a ball might overboard. He was 
drowned, of course. 

But as steamers multiply and the number of sailing-ships de- 
creases, going aloft will become the least and most infrequent of sea 
duties. "Practical seamanship, in the old sense, is bound to die out, 
because there is no need to preserve it. It was only the other day 
that an old skipper assured me that he was acquainted with the 
male of a steamer who did not know what a harness-cask was, 
“ and worst of all, sir,” cried my friend, ” he’s not ashamed of his 
ignorance.” It is true that harness-casks have not much to do with 
seamanship; but one may excuse a shipmaster of the old school for 
taking a very gloomy view of the contemporary marine when he 
meets a man holding a master-mariner’s certificate ignorant of the 
receptacle in which Jack’s salt horse is kept when he is at sea. 
]\lost of the steamers nowadays are monkey-rigged, many of them 
with pole-masts, which are useful mainly as derricks upon which a 
little bit of fore and aft canvas will be hoisted to steady the ves- 
sels. What should men who serve in such ships know about going 
aloft? Even a landsman may comprehend the emotion excited in 
a seaman who has passed his life in sailing-ships when he sees sail- 
ors without any spars or rigging to attend to, and with nothing to 
do but to wash decks down. 

Kearly all the work of the traditional mariner lies aloft, and to 
reflect upon Jack without dead-eyes to turn in, chafing gear to look 
after, reef-points to knot, rigging to tar, masts to stay, stucldinir-SHil 
gear to reeve, and the like, is almost as confounding as 'to think of 
him sleeping aft, eating fresh meat throughout the run, and going 
to the steward for a can of filtered water, .instead of to the captairr 


10 


KOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


for liis eight bells calker of fiery black rum. Ko doubt things aie 
pleasanter as they are. it must be nice to turn in with the certainty 
of having- the whole of your watch below, instead of going to bed 
in your sea-boots in readiness for the thundering of a handspike, 
and the cruel roar of “All hands shorten sail!" And yet, to the 
true sailor, going aloft is so much a part of his life, it is so com- 
plete a condition of his vocation, that when such a man finds him- 
self aboard a steamer with nothing to take notice of above his head, 
it may be supposed that at the first going oft he is as fully bewil- 
dered as a steamer’s man — that is, a man who has never served in 
anything but steamers— would be among the ropes of a full-rigged 
ship, taken aback with her studding-sails abroad. He will miss the 
old songs at the ref^f tackles, the flapping of canvas, the thud of 
coils of halyards and clew-lines flung down on deck, the springing 
into the, shrouds, the helter-skelter for the weather-earing, or the 
ascent of the lop-gallant mast that jumps to the flogging of the 
clewed-up sails. 

There is a touch of wild excitement in going aloft in heavy weather, 
which no seaman can be insensible to; just as in a calm day or 
night a man may find a strange pleasure in lingering a few moments 
aloft after he has done his work, and looking down. The labor of 
reefing has been greatly diminished by the double top-sail yards, 
which halve the great sails, so that when the halyards of the upper 
yards are let go, the ship is under close-reefed top-sails. Moreover, 
!,here is only half the weight of the sail to handle in reefing or stow- 
ing. Tills valuable contrivance makes the task of shortening sail 
light in comparison with what the labor was in the days of the 
whole top-sail. Old seamen will remember what that kind of can- 
vas involved in a ship of fourteen or fifteen hundred tons, manned 
by about eighteen or twenty men, capable of doing sailor’s work 
aloft. 

It is the second dog watch. The royals and mizzen-top-gallant 
sail have been furled, but the wind comes in freshening puffs, the 
sky has a menacing look away out on the starboard beam* and at 
eight bells all hands are kept on deck to roll up the main-sail and 
top-gallant sails, and lie a single reef in the fore and mizzen top- 
sails. The sea washes noisil}’- against the weather bow, and the 
night settles down as black as a pocket; but the ship is tolerably 
snug, there is no great weight of wind as yet, and the watch below 
arc dismissed to the forecastle. They have been an hour in their 
hammocks or bunks, when, on a sudden, the scuttle is rudely flung 
open, and a loud cry summons them on deck. They are up in a 
moment, scarcely waiting to pull on their jackets, for the instant 
t-hey are awake they perceive that the vessel is on her beam-ends, 
and they can hear the thunder of a gale of wind raging overhead. 
All three top-sail halyards have been let go, and the watch are yell- 
ing out at the reef-tackles, the skipper shouting at tho mizzen-rig- 
ging, the chief mate bawling from the break of the poop, and the 
second mate and boatswain roaring in the vraist and on the fore- 
castle. The sea is flying heavily over the weather rail of the pros- 
trate ship, and adding its peculiar bursting noise to the din of the 
furiously-shaken canvas, to the deafening booming of the wind, 
and the hoarse, long-drawn cries«iOf the sailors hauling upon the 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE, 


11 

ropes. You can barely see the weatlier shrouds, though to leeward 
their black lines are plain enout^h against the washing heights of 
foam which swell up as high as the rail of the bulwarks. You do 
not feel the force of the gale. until you are in the rigging, and then 
for a spell the iron-hard pressure of it pins you against the shrouds 
as if you had been made a spread-eagle. The rain diives along in 
slashing horizontal lines, and you see the sparkle of the deluge over 
the sky-light where the light of the cabin lamp is shining; or, 
maybe, the gale is charged with sleet and hail, and the cold so 
tautens your fingers that you can scarcely curl them to the shape of 
the rope you grasp. Over the top you swarm in company with the 
rest of your watch, perhaps getting a blow on the head from the 
heel of some fellow above you as you lay yourself backward to 
swing over the futtock shrouds; and then, finding the weather side 
of the top sail yard with as many hands on it as are needed, you 
pass over to leeward, where you find the boatswain or third mate 
astride of the yard-arm, ready for the cry of “ Haul out to lee- 
ward,” to pass the earing. At such a time as this a man has loo 
much to do to look about him; the ship is brourrht close to shake 
the sail, that the men may get thereef-bands against the yard, other- 
wise the canvas stands out to the force of the gale in a surface as 
round as St. Paul’s dome, and so hard and tense that itwmuld serv^: 
as a platform for* a ball-room. 

In the whole top-sail days I have seen halt a dozen men standing 
upon the canvas in the slings and quarters trying to stamp the sail 
down to bring the reef-points within reach without so much as dint- 
ing the wind-swollen convexity. Still it is possible to knot a reef- 
point, and take a look round and below. It is a wonderful scene; 
no landsman can conceive of its wild and awful majesty. The ship 
surges heavily through the black heavings, and with every headlong 
plunge fills a wide circumference of the far-down ebony waters 
with a furious swirling of foam, in the midst of which her long, nar- 
row shape is distinctly visible. Overhead is a dim vision of naked 
spars and yards, reeling in the boisterous void in whose gloom it is 
just possible to trace the outline of huge black clouds rushing past 
like folds of swiftly-carried smoke. The yard on which you stand 
is at an angle of thirty or thirty-five degrees, and every lean-down 
of the slender fabric that supports the immense superstructure of 
masts threatens to submerge the point of it, astride of which — riding 
it as a horse — sits the seaman who takes the lee-earing; and his 
figure and that of the fellow beneath swinging on the flemish-horse,. 
and those of the row of men who overhang the yard, and who 
chorus with a kind of shrielc that rings athwart the yelling of the 
gale to the cry from the weather yardarm of ” Light over to wind- 
ward!” are marked like pen-and-ink drawings upon white paper 
against the snow of the seas which stretch from the ship’s side into 
tlie darkness. 

But this is only one aspect of ” going aloft.” Anotber—if the 
bowsprit and jib-booms may be included under the head of the 
word ” aloft ”— is that of laying out to furl, let me say the outer 
jib, when it has come on to blow hard enough to make the stowing 
of that sail necessary. From the mast-head you see the ship under 
you; you can watch her hull flying through the sea, mark the 


12 


EOUND THE GALLEY FIRE, 


glorious white of the foam that bursts from her bows and races in a 
broad band astern, and behold the ship in her noble solitude amid 
the tenantless world of waters whose pale green skirts lean against 
the hazy azure of the remote heavens. But on the jib-boom you 
have the ship rushing at you, as it were; her cut-water seems to 
bear right down upon you; you see her coppered forefoot gleaming 
with a greenish tinge through the glass-clear water whose surface it 
divides into two feather-shaped fountains, whose seething and hiss- 
ing and prismatic summits arch away from the glossy bends. 

And now, as she dips with a glorious rush into the hollow over 
whose yawning gloom you are poised as you overhang the jib- 
boom, the half-buried bows break the sea into smoke, and yeast, 
and snow; the white and hissing mass, splendid with sunshine or 
rendered more vivid yet by the dark green of the seas along which 
it is sent rolling, roars and runs ahead of the ship as far as the fly- 
ing-jib-boom, where its impetus fails and the soaring vessel swings 
over it, rising almost noiselessly over the thick froth, and in a breath 
it is passed, while you look down along the sloping deck from the 
forked-up boom and mark how like a creature of instinct the noble 
ship seems to be gathering herself together for the next headlong 
jump, her copper shining to windward, her black sides lustrous as 
a curried hide with the whirling spray, her leaning masts full of 
thunder on high, the white sails hard and still as carven marble, no 
sound reaching you but the regular wash of the spurned and 
trampled waters under the bows, the rude and clear moaning of the 
wind in the rigging, and the complaining of massive timbers as the 
stem of the ship lengthens in a steady upheaval, and then crushes 
-down until the torn and sobbing billows of foam are flashing their 
white feathers over the head-boards. Or jump aloft to loose, let us 
say, the mizzen-royal after the tropical squall has gone away to 
leew^ard, and left the clear moon shining in a purified heaven of 
indigo, and striking a cone of silver glory in the dark sea whose 
northern waters are studded with flakes of light from the great stars. 
It is the middle watch; you have overhauled your clew-lines, the 
yard has been hoisted over your head, you come down the top-gal- 
Lint rigging into the cross-trees, and linger there a few moments. 
All is silent on deck; the helmsman stands motionless at the wheel; 
you hear the faint jar of the tiller chains; you mark the delicate 
nimbus of light round the binnacle hood. Nowhere is the mystery 
wrought by the magical beams of the moon felt so much as at sea. 
The pearl- like radiance steeps the fabric of the ship in an atmos- 
phere of soft light as illusive as the clouds of phosphorescent tires 
Which bleak from her sides as she leans with the swell. The move- 
ments of the sails are like the flapping of pbantom wings; and not a 
sigh of air, not a sound of chafing rope, nbt a voice calling sudden- 
ly from the distant deck, but seems to take from the moonlight and 
the measureless and impenetrable spaces of the deep, and the im- 
mense and infolding silence of those far-off winters, a character of 
unreality that makes them seem the very phantasm and mockery of 
the things they veritably are. 

A man might linger a long hour at the altitude of the cross-trees 
among the shadows of the moonlit, placid ocean night without 
weariness. Better than the loftiest and loneliest cliff is the mast- 


ROUXl) THE GALLEY FIRE. 


13 


head of a ship for the surveyal of the sublime and mijrht}^ surface 
on which she floats, tor you rock in unison with the breathings of 
the deep; you are upon her great heart, and every beat of it is 
marked by a stately motion of the towering masts against the stars; 
phosphoric outlines of huge fish haunt the sluggish wake; or a 
sound as of a long, deep-drawn respiration denotes the neighbor- 
hood of a leviathan whose vast proportions, as they heave in the 
broad silver stream of moonlight, resemble the hull of a ship keel 
up, driven to the surface by some hidden power and slowly settling 
downward again. 

These are some of the excitements and some of the quiet pleasures 
of “ going aloft.” It is, no doubt, a high|y sentimental view of the 
duty, and sailors who have had to let go the reef-points, and beat 
their hands against the yards to drive life enough into their fingers 
to enable them to hold on, may consider that a very different repre- 
sentation of that kind of work would recommend itself a good deal 
more than this to their experience. Very possibly. But retrospec- 
tion is apt to make us tender; and since *' going aloft ” must in the 
course of time — unless the ship builders change their minds — be- 
come a thing of the past, it is worth while spending a few minutes 
in trying to discover what there was of poetry and the picturesque 
in that old obligation of the marine life in the discharge of which 
the English sailor has always proved a shining example to all 
mariners. Even now— in these days when the steam engine has so 
eaten into our maritime habits that a sailing-ship is looked upon as 
a kind of wonder of other times— do we not find Jack doing honor 
to his Queen by standing erect upon the main truck? But, oh! 
master mariners, mates, boatswains, and able seamen, all you who 
have youngsters under your charge or among you as shipmates, 
have mercy upon the timid lad, give him time to feel his way aloft, 
show him the lubber’s hole, and remember that many a first-rate sail- 
or has faltered at the outset, and gazed with horror and despair at 
those giddy heights whose summits seemed to his boyish gaze to 
pierce the sky. 


A TRICK AT THE WHEEL. 

1 REMEMBER a Seaman, who had served for years both in sailing 
and steamships, telling me that never in all his life did he remember 
the like of the impression produced upon him one night when he 
was at the helm of a large ocean passenger steamer. He described 
the darkness; the occasional scattering of red sparks blown low 
down upon the sea on the lee beam; the glimmer of white water 
here and there out in the windy gloom; the silence aboard the ves- 
sel, disturbed only by the muffled beating of the engines and the 
seething of water washing in snow from under the bows; and he 
told me how all these things, combined with the thought that under 
his feet there lay sleeping a whole crowd of men and women, 
made him feel as though he and the ship and the great wind- swept 
shadow through which she was speeding, were portions of a phan- 
tom world, and that nothing was real and sentient but the compass, 
whose illuminated card stood out upon the gloom like a composant 
at a ship’s yard-arm. 


14 


BOUND THE GALLEY FIBE. 


I can conceive of many a strange, fanciful thought coming into a 
sailor’s minil as he stands grasping the wheel in the lonel}'’ night 
watch, and 1 say this with a plentiful knowledge of the seaman’s 
prosaic and unsentimental character. A man must be but a very 
short way removed from a four-foored animal not to feel at times 
the wonderful and subduing spell which the ocean will fling over 
the human soul; and being at the wheel will give him the best 
chance of yielding to the nameless witchery, for at such a time— in 
most cases— he is alone, no one accosts him, the gloom falls down 
and blots out the figure of the officer of the watch, and completes 
the deep sense of solitude that is to be got from a spell at the helm 
on a dark and quiet night at sea. 1 cannot but think that the spirit 
of the deep is brought, at such a time, nearer to you aboard a sail- 
ing than aboard a steam ship. The onward-rushing fabric that is 
impelled by engines demands incessant vigilance; she may be off 
her course even in the time that a man takes to lift his eyes to mark 
allying meteor; there are no moments of rest. But in a sailing- 
ship you have the moonlit night and burnished swell heaving up in 
lines of ebony out of the visionary horizon, where the stars are 
wanly winking, until it rolls in billows of sparkling quicksilver 
under the wake of the bland and beautiful luminary; there is not 
a breath of air aloft, though little creepings of wind circle softly 
about the decks as the pallid surfaces of canvas swing in and out 
with the leaning of the ship; the moonlight fi^lls in pools of light 
upon the planks, and every shadow cast uponlhose pearl-like sur- 
faces is as black and sharp and clear as a tracing in ink; the after 
portions of the sails are dark as bronze, but looking at them for- 
ward they rise into the air like pieces of white satin, soaring into a 
stately edifice full of delicate hurrying shadows which resemble the 
streaky luster on the inside of an oyster-shell as the cloths swell 
out or hollow in with the drowsy motion, and crowned with the 
little royals, which seems to melt, even as the eye watches them, 
like summer clouds upon the heaven of stars. 

Moments of such repose as this you will get in a sailing-ship. 
\Yho that has stood at the wheel at such a time but remembers 
the soft patter of reef-points upon the canvas, the frosty twinkling 
of the dew upon the skylights and rail, the hollow sob of the swell 
under the counter as the ship heaves her stern, and the tiller-chains 
rattle, and the wheel jumps to the echo of the groan of the rudder- 
head? 

It is the middle watch; eight bells were struck a quarter of 
an hour since; the watch on deck are forward, coiled away, any- 
where, and nothing stirs on the forecastle; the officer on duty 
walks the starboard side of the deck, for the yards are braced to 
port, and -that makes a weather deck where the mate is pacing, 
sleepily scratching the back of his head, and casting drowsy 
glances aloft and at the sea. The moon is low in the west, and has 
changed her silver into copper, and will be gone soon. The calm 
is wonderfully expressed by the reflection she drops; the mirrored 
radiance streams toward you like a river of pallid gold, narrow at 
the horizon and broadening, tan-shaped, until it seems within a 
biscuit’s throw of the ship, where it vanishes in a fine haze; but on 
either hand of it the water is as black as ink, while the luster of the 


KOUlsD THE GALLEY FIRE. 15 

moon has quenched the stars all about her, and left the sky in 
which she hangs as dark as the ocean. 

The setting orb carries the mind with it. The eye will seek the 
light, and it is a kind of instinct that makes a man watch the sink- 
ing of the moon at sea, when there is a deeper repose in the air and 
nothing to hinder his thoughts from following the downward-sail- 
ing orb. Many a time have I watched her, and thought of the old 
home she would be shining upon ; the loved scenes she would be 
making beautiful with her holy light. There is nothing in life that 
gives one such a sense of distance, of infinite remoteness, as the 
setting of the sun or moon at sea. It defines the immeasurable 
leagues of water which separate you from those you love with a 
sharpness that is scarcely felt at other times. It is the only mark 
upon the circle of the ocean, and courts you into a reckoning which 
tliere is something too vague in the bare and infinite horizon to in- 
vite. As one bell strikes the moon rests her lower limb upon the 
horizon, and her reflection shortens away from the ship’s side as 
the red fragment of disk sinks behind the black water-line. In a 
few seconds nothing but a speck of light that glows like a live 
ember is visible: and when that is quenched the faint saffron tinge 
that hung about the sky when the moon was setting dies out and 
the whole circumference of the ocean is full of the blackness of 
night. 

The ship makes but a ghostly shape. The stars are there, but a 
haze floats like a veil under them; the diamond-dust that glittered 
in the hollow^ caverns of the firmament is eclipsed, and the planets 
are rayless and sickly in their defined and bluish-colored forms. A 
fold of deeper darkness seems to have swept along in the wake of 
the vanished moon, and the officer of the watch coming up to the 
binnacle takes a brief look at the card, and then goes to the quarter 
and stands there softly whistling, while the canvas aloft echoes with 
a louder note, and the rolling of the ship breaks the water under 
her counter into foam that seethes sharply and expires quickly. 
Black as the water is out on the starboard bow, you notice a shadow' 
upon it that gives a fresh shade, a further profundity, to the jetty 
obscurity, and in a few moments the sails aloft fall asleep as though 
tlie waiid of a magician had been waved over the swaying spars 
and a soft air comes blowing over the rail. 

All back forrards!” rings out a hoarse voice, and the cry finds 
an echo in the hollow canvas. The mate runs along the deck bawl- 
ing out orders to flatten in the head-sheets and square the after- 
yards, and so forth; the men come out of a dozen corners, coils of 
rigging are flung down, songs are raised, sheaves squeal as the yards 
are 'swung, top-sail sheets rattle, and all is bustle and hurry. 
Meanwhile the wind freshens with a moan in the gathering gust, 
and the ship leans under it as her headsails fill, and she pays off. 
Presently the yards are braced round, the vessel brought to her 
course, and the wind is found to be a point free. The decks are still 
full of life, tacks have to be boarded, “ small pulls ” are wanted here 
and there, and the running gear has to be coiled away; the light 
from the binnacle lamp puzzles your eye, and when you lilt your 
gaze from the illuminated card the darkness seems to stand around 
you like a wall; but the compass is there to tell you that the ship 


16 


BOUND THE GALLEY EIRE, 


heads her course. You would know with your eyes blindfolded, 
by the mere feel of the helm, that everything is drawing, and amid 
the calls of the mate and the songs of the sailors you can hear the 
sloppy sound of flat falls of water under the weather-bow, and the 
hiss of exploding bubbles, and the faint wash of frolh churned up 
by the rudder below j^ou. 

Two bells are struck, and all is quiet once more. The skipper 
has been on deck, talked with the mate, pushed his bronzed face 
betwixt you and the binnacle, and after a few turns and several 
prolonged looks aloft and around the sea, has gone below again. 
The wind has steadily freshened, and the ship, under all plain sail, 
heels amid the darkness like a leaning column of white vapor, bo 
softly she sweeps through the snow with which she girdles her 
shapely length, courtesying with queenly grace as she runs over 
the long-drawn undulations out of whose inky coils the wind is 
striking phosphoric sparks, that she steers herself; you have nothing 
to do but keep hold of the spokes, and let the breezes blow the 
noble fabric along. The deep gloom is full of strange sounds now 
that the seamen are forward, and all is silent aft. 

A spirit-like minstrelsy echoes down from the glimmering in- 
clined heights like a far-off chorus of human voices; the wind is 
full of the mysterious souhd. It does not appear to come from the 
ship, but from a group of invisible ghostly creatures sailing through 
the air over the mastheads, and setting the moaning voices and sob- 
bing wash of the ocean to melodies which may easily seem to make 
this darkness belong to the night of a world peopled by phantoms 
and creatures without similitude in human knowledge. Hark! 
how plaintive is the song of the bow-wave that falls in an arch of 
green fire from the shearing stem, and rolls aft in a white swirl, 
interlaced with fltful and sullen flashes of phosphoric light! But 
the breeze freshens yet; you cannot count a dozen stars in the void 
of gloom overhead, the music aloft takes a clearer note, straining 
sounds are audible as the passing swell rolls the ship to windward, 
the white water under the main sheet rises closer to the scuppers 
and flashes fast and tar from under the counter into the blackness 
over the stern. An order is sharply bawled out, and some hands 
come tumbling aft and jump into the mizzen rigging to roll up the 
cross-jack. A hoarse song reaches you from the forecastle as the 
flying-jib down haul is manned, and at the same moment the fore 
and mizzen-royal halyards are let go. Y"ou hear this canvas flap- 
ping in the gloom amid the chorus of the men on the cross-jack 
yard as they trice up the bunt. There must be no more wool-gath- 
ering with you now. The wheel is giving you as mach work as 
you want; ever^'- now and again a smart kick stiffens your arms 
into iron, and you begin to feel that your jacket will have to come 
off soon. 

For sonae time nothing more is done, but the watch keep on their 
feet and stand about ready for the next call, which they know will 
not be long dela^yed. The sea to windward is full of white glanc- 
ings, and the breaking heads make a vague light of their own which 
gives you a sight of the w^ater for some distance. The canvas that 
has been taken off the ship counts for nothing; Ihe mainrro}^! is 
'''till on her, and she is heeling over like a racing yacht, striking 


HOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 17 

the bow swell with a stem that hisses like red-hot iron, and shat- 
teriiiiT Hie coils Ci liquid jet into foam, which widens out on either 
hand of her into a storm of snow, in the midst of which the flying hull 
of the vessel is as clearly traced as were the shadows of her rigging 
in the moonlight, while her iron-hard distended canvas is full of 
the low thunder of the pouring blast, and her forecastle is dark 
with flying spray that sweeps over the rail and strikes the deck like 
a hail-storm. It is noble sailing, and this booming and hooting 
ocean night wind is something to be made the most of while it lasts; 
but it gives you at the wheel as much occupation as you relish. It 
is like drawing teeth to “ meet her ” as the swell sweeps the ship 
round; and at last the captain, who is again on deck, and who has 
been standing at the binnacle for five minutes, sings out for another 
hand to come aft to the wheel. A figure tumbles along in a hurry 
and stations himself to leeward of you, and thereupon your work, 
though it is by no means half as easy again, becomes considerably 
lighter than it was. “Hold on a minute. Bill,” says 3'our mate, 
and he feels over his pocket for a chew of tobacco. The quid 
found and properly stowed away in his cheek, your companion re- 
sumes his grasp of the wheel, and in the haze of the binnacle lamp 
you may see his leathern jaws working like an old cow chewing the 
cud as be mumbles over the black fragment, sometimes directing a 
doleful squint at the compass, sometimes looking astern while he 
helps you to put the wheel uj) or down that you may keep the 
course swinging fair with the lubber’s mark. 

But the ship was being overdriven. At one bell it was a dead 
calm; it is not three bells yet, and here is the sea white with wind, 
and the vessel roaring through the smother with the blasts thunder- 
ing like a hurricane in the sails — 

“ In main royal and mizzen top-gallant sail.” 

The canvas rattles like an old wagon over a stony street as the 
clew-lines are manned, and while furling it the foretop-gallant 
lialyards are let go. What other sails are taken in you do not know, 
for the ship wants much clever watching, and the skipper is at 
hand to bring you up with a round turn if the vessel should be a 
quarter of a point off her course. Being eased, she steers more 
comfortably, but whole top-sails and courses and main top-gallant 
sails are rushing her through it fiercely; the water on her lee quarter 
is pretty nearly as high as her main brace bumpkin, and the billow 
there goes along with her as if it were a part of the vessel; the main 
tack groans under the tearing and rending pull of the huge convex 
surface of canvas; now and again the blow of the swell wdiich the 
racing vessel hits laterally makes her tremble fore and aft like a 
house under a clap of thunder. But she is to have all she can bear ; 
the spell of dead calm is to be atoned for; and so on through the 
shrilling and echoing darkness rushes the great fabric, sweeping 
her pallid canvas through the folds of gloom like the pinions of 
some vast spirit of the deep, making the water roar past her as she 
goes, breaking the dark swell into fire and foam as she rushes 
through the liquid acclivities with her powerful stem, with notes of 
mad laughter and lamentable wailing in her rigging, and with 
screaming decks which hollowly echo the fall of the solid bodies 


18 


HOUXD THE GALLEY FIKE, 


of water which shoot up just before the weather fore-rigeing, and 
roll in a rush of creaming white into I he lee scuppers as far aft as 
the break of the poop. 

At last you hear the welcome sound of four bells; your trick is 
up, the wheel is relieved, and catching your jacket off the grating 
aWt the helm you walk forward, wiping the perspiration from 
your forehead; and, dropping down the fore-scuttle, grope about 
for your pipe, which you light at the slush-lamp that swings from 
a grimy beam, and returning on deck squat somewhere out of the 
way of the wind and wet, earnestly hoping that if it is to be a case 
of “ reef topsails,” there will be time for you to have your smoke 
out before the order is thundered forth. 


THE BAILIFF AT SEA. 

Some time ago 1 heard that a bailiff had teen carried off to sea 
while in the execution of his duty. Anxious to learn the nature of 
his voyage, how he fared, and what condition he was in, mentally 
and physically, when restored to his anxious relatives, 1 made in- 
quiries, and my diligence was at last rewarded by meeting the mate 
of the vessel that had sailed away with the man. Truth obliges me 
to own that this mate was not what might be considered a ver}-- 
gentlemanly person. It was not his velvet waistcoat, nor a rather 
vicious squint, nor a striking-looking bald head ringed with a layer 
of red hair like a grummet of rope-yarns; the w^ant of genteelness 
was noticeable in his abundant use of what is called ” langwidge.” 

” If I were a bailiff,” thought I, as 1 glanced at his immense hands 
and huge arms, which swelled out his coat-sleeves like the wind in 
a sailor’s small-clothes drying in a strong breeze on the forestay, 

” 1 should not like to be put ‘ in possession ’ of a house occupied 
by you, my hearty. ” 

I took a seat opposite him and said, ” So you’re the mate of the 
vessel that stole away the county court man?” 

” Right,” said he, looking at me, without a move in his face; 

” but don’t you go and say that I’m the mate as gave him up again. 

If I’d had my way he’d be in charge o’ any goods he might have 
come across in the inside of a wdiale by this time. I’d ha’ chucked 
i:im overboard, as sure as that there hand’s on this table,” and 
down came a very leg-of-mutton of a fist with a blow that jerked 
his tumbler into the air. It was as good as a hint that the glass 
wanted filling; and when this was done, my companion opened the 
top buttons of his warm and tight velvet waistcoat, and composed 
himself into a posture for conversation. 

” How,” asked 1, “came your skipper to have a bailiff aboard 
his vessel?” 

”You may ask how,” he growled; “what I say is, what right 
had he to come? I've got nothing to say against the law as it works 
for them as lives ashore— for them as are in fixed houses, and can’t . 
sail away with any blooming old rag of a chap, in a greasy coat, ns 
comes in with a bit of paper, and takes a cheer, and says, ‘ Here I 
sit, mates, till I’m paid off.’ But what has the likes of such scow- 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


19 


banks got to do "with sailor-men when once they’re aboard? What 
I say is, that when a man’s on the water, his chest stowed away, 
articles signed, all the law that consarns him is in the cabin. The 
cap’n's the law; and not only the law, but judge, magistrate, 
bailiff, husher, registrar. High Chancellor, and Lord-Mayor o’ Lon- 
don on top of it: and my argument is that any man as takes the 
liberty to walk over a wessel’s side and order captain about, and 
sing out contrairy orders, and threaten to have him purged (1 heard 
that very word. ‘ Ye’ll have to purge for this,’ says the bailiff. 
Did ye ever hear such language applied to a captain?)— any man, 1 
say, as takes such liberty as that ought to be dropped overboard 
without asking ‘ by your leave,’ and, as I said before, left to take 
possession of any goods he came across in the inside of a fish or at 
the bottom of the ocean.” 

1 waited until he had partially quenched his excitement by along 
pull at his tumbler, and then asked him again how it happened that 
his vessel had been, boarded by a bailiff. 

” I’ll tell you,” he answered. ” The wessel was a brig of three 
bundled tons. Coming home, she plumped into a schooner. It 
was the schooner’s fault; we sung out to her to get out of the road; 
instead of doing which she ported her helm as if to provoke us, and 
in we went, doing her a deal of damage and carrying away our 
own jib-boom. W^ell, we arrived in port and discharged, and then 
filled up again with coal. It was Toosday afternoon, the sky mid- 
dling dirty, and a fresh breeze of wind blowing. We hauled out 
and lay at a mooring-buoy, waiting for the tide to serve. 1 was 
talking to the captain, when I took notice of a boat coming along, 
rowed by a couple o’ watermen, and a chap in a chimbley-pot hat 
sitting in the starn sheets. 

‘‘ ‘ Is that boat for us?’ says the captain, looking. 

” ‘ Why,’ I says, ‘ it looks as if she meant to run us down. Is ft 
a wager? Bust me if hever 1 saw watermen pull like that afore.’ 

” They were dragging on their oars as if they would spring ’em, 
lying back until nothing but their noses was to be seen above the 
gunwale, and making the water fly in clouds over the cove in the 
starn as if prompt drowning was too good for him, and he was to 
be smothered slow. They dashed alongside, hooked on, and the 
fellow in the chimbley-pot hat comes scraping over the rail, shaking 
liini-elf free o’ the water as he tumbled on to the deck like a New- 
foundland dog. 

‘‘‘Just in time, captain,’ says he, with an impudent kind o’ 
smile, rummaging in his side-pocket; and with that he houts with 
a sort of dockiment, and hands it to the skipper. 

‘‘ ‘ What’s this?’ says the skipper, smelling round the paper, as it 
might be, but never offering to touch it. 

‘‘ ‘ Only a border for you to return to the bosom of your family/ 
he says, ‘ as the date o’ your sailing’s not yet fixed.’ 

‘‘ ‘ Isn’t it?’ says the captain, breathing short. ‘Who are you, 
and what d’ye want?’ 

‘‘ ‘ I’m a bailiff,’ says the man; ‘ and I’m here to take charge o’ 
this vessel, pending the haction that’s been entered against her in 
the Hadmiralty side o’ the county court by the schooner as ye was 
in collision with.’ 


'20 


EOUKB THE GALLEY EIRE. 


“ ‘ Can ye swim?’ asks the captain. 

“ ‘ Never you mind whether I can or not,’ says the bailiff, look- 
ing round at us, for all hands were collected and listening their 
hardest. 

“ ‘Because,’ says the captain, ‘if you can’t swim you’d better 
turn to and hail that boat to come back again and put ye ashore. ” 

“ ‘ No, no,’ says the bailiff, ‘ I’m not going ashore, my friend. 
I’m here to take charge o’ this brig and stop her from going to sea.’ 

“ Had the captain chosen then and there to give orders for that 
bailiff to be dropped overboard, I believe I’m the man as would 
have executed the command. Taking the temper 1 was then in, I 
don’t know anything that would ha’ given me more satisfaction to 
perform. The aggravation of being stopped when we were all ready 
to get away was the least part of it: it wss the bailiff’s cool 
grins, the impudence in his eyes as he looked round, as much as to 
say, ‘ All what 1 see is mine,’ his taking the skipper’s place and 
saying, ‘ Ye sha’n’t do this, and 1 won’t allow that,’ that made me 
want to lay hands upon him. The captain stared at him a bit, as if 
considering what he should do; then turning to me, he asked me 
the time. 1 told him. 

“ ‘ In another quarter of an hour,’ says he, “ loose the torp-sails 
and make ready to get away. ’ 

“ ‘ Y^ou’d better not,’ says the bailiff; ‘ it’ll be gross contempt of 
court if you do.’ 

“ ‘ Court!’ says the skipper. ‘ Court! there is no court here, Mr. 
Bailiff. This is a brig, not a court. Don’t talk of courts to me. 
The gross contempt is of your committing. How dare you stand 
there ordering ot me?’ 

“ ‘ Rest assured,’ says the bailiff, ‘ you’ll be punished if you don’t 
do what 1 say. You’ll have to purge in open court, and that’s a job 
that may cost ye enough to lay up in the Union for the rest of your 
natural days.’ 

“ ‘ Stow that!’ says I, doubling up my fist, and stepping close to 
the fellow; ‘ it the captain stands that kind o’ jaw, I won’t.’ 

“‘I’m here in the hexecution of my duty,’ says the bailiff, 
dropping his confident grins, and beginning to grow whitish. ‘ What- 
ever you do contrairy to my orders you’ll do at your peril.’ 

“ And so saying, he walks right aft, and sits on the taffrail with 
his arms folded. 

“ Never was any quarter of an hour longer than that which the 
captain told me to wait. 1 had my watch in my hand, and all the 
time 1 was afraid the skipper would change his mind and give in to 
the bailiff, who sat aft, with his hat over his ears, looking at the 
shore with his littie eyes. 

“ ‘ Time’s up, sir!’ I bawled to the captain. 

“ ‘ Loose the torp-sails,’ he sings out; and in a moment all hands 
were running about, sheeting home, and yelling out at the ropes, 
being as much ateared as 1 was that if we were not quick the sight 
of the doped bailiff ’ud operate upon the skipper’s hintellect and 
stop our just rewenge upon that funkshonary’s audacity. The bailiff, 
seeing the men at work, tumbles off the taffrail and comes running 
forrards. 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 21 

“ ‘ D’ye mean to say you don’t intend to obey the law?’ he shouts 
out, holdins: on to his chimbley-pot. 

“ ‘ Out ot the ways!’ answers the skipper; * there’s no room for 
law here. We’re full up, mate; and since ye’re bound for a voy- 
age, blow your nose and wave your hand to them as ye’re a parting 
fronil’ and, as he says this, the wessel, catching the wind that was 
coming strong enough to make nothing above our lop-sails necessary, 
lays down to it, and we heads for the open water. 

“ I saw the bailiff staring wildly around him, as if he really wwZc? 
jump overboard, and it was worth a month’s pay to see him look- 
ing like that, and holding his hat on. 

“ ‘ Why, man,’ he shouts to the captain, ‘ you’re never in earnest! 
d’ 3 'e know what you’re a doing of?’ and finding that the skipper 
took no notice, he calls out to the men, ‘ You’ll work this vessel at 
your peril if you obey your captain. My orders are to stop this 
brig, and if you don’t allow me to execute my duty—’ But just 
as he came to this the wessel met the first of the seas which were 
rolling outside the harbor — stiff seas they wos, for it was blowing 
half a gale o’ wind; she put her nose into it, and then rolled over, 
fit to bring her lower yard-arms into the water; away flew the 
bailiff’s chimbly-pot hat clean overboard, and ye may boil me alive 
if 1 didn’t think he meant to follow it; for the send o’ the wessel 
tripped him over the weather hatch coamings, and he seemed to 
shoot — ay, as neatly as if he’d been kicked by one of them giants I 
used to read about when 1 was a little ’un— clean into the lee scup- 
pers, where he lay stunned, as I thought, until all on a sudden he 
jumped up and went clawing along till he come to the lee o’ the 
after- deck house, where he squatted down, looking with his yaller 
face and blowing hair like a Madagascar monkey recovering from 
a fit of intoxication.” 

Here my companion broke into a loud laugh, which he repealed 
again and again, as if the thoughts awakened in his mind were of 
too exquisite a kind to be dismissed with a single guffaw. 

‘‘ I don’t know,” he continued, after a bit, wiping his eyes, and 
then fixing his dismal and malignant squint upon me, ” whether on 
the whole we should ha’ done better by dropping him overboard.” 
The brig was as deep as pretty nigh twice her tonnage in coal could 
make her; she was a wet boat at any time; but now she tumbled 
about as if she had made up her mind to drown herself, 1 reckon 
she knew she had a bailiff aboard. Every dip forrards threw the 
water over her head in oceans; she’d rob to wind’ard almost as 
heavily as to leeward, so that the decks was all awash, and I was 
looking and hoping all the time to see the bailiff fetch away. But 
there was enough law left in him to keep him holding on. I w^as 
standing to wind’ard of the house— the skipper being aft agin the 
wheel— when Mr. Bailiff comes staggering round, his breeches cling- 
ing to his legs like wet brown paper, and his shoes full o’ water, 

” ‘ Halloo, shipmate!’ 1 sings out, seeing him making for the cabin 
door, ‘ where are you bound to? Aren’t you happy where you are?’ 

” ‘ I’m going to lie down on one of the lockers,’ says he. ‘ 1 feel 
half froze, and 1 shall be sick presently.’ 

” ‘ You may be half froze and sick too,’ says 1, ‘ but smother me, 
Mr. Bailiff, if you shall use the cabin, ’ 


22 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


“ ‘ Not use the cabin?’ says he, gaping at me, and talking as it 
ll:eie was something in his swaller; ‘ d'ye mean to keep me on deck 
all night?’ 

“‘Don’t ask no questions,’ says I. ‘You’re here by French 
leave. Nobody wants you. It L had my way you’d be towing 
astern, with your neck in a bowline; and it all the rest o’ your tribe 
and the blooming ’tornies you sarve were tailed on in your wake, 
I’d be willing to woyage round tlie world, and never grumble if we 
took years in reaching home.’’ 

“ 1 was in a passion, which rose my voice, and the skipper, hear- 
ing me, comes over. 

“ ‘ Halloo, bailiii!’ says he, cheerfully, ‘ not drowned yet, my, 
lad? What d’ye think o’ the weather?’ 

“‘Captain,’ says the man, ‘ you-’ve carried me away by force. 
D’ye mean to freeze me to death by keeping me on deck all night? 
Your mate here says I’m not to use the cabin.’ 

“ ‘ Why should he use it, capt’n?’ says 1. ‘ Could a sailor man 

sit with the likes of him? I’ve messed afore now with Chaney- 
men; ]’ve slept along with Peruvian beach-combers when the air ’<3 
been that thick with the smell of onions ye might have leant agin 
it; but ye may boil me, skipper,’ says 1, ‘ if ever i occupied a cabin 
along with a bailiff afore, and if he’s to share lhai crib along with 
us, i’ll sleep forrards.’ 

“ ‘ You hear that, bailiff,’ says the skipper. ‘ 1 can’t let my mate 
live forrards, to oblige you. It you’re cold, 1 dare say the cook’ll 
let you warm yourself in the galley. But nobodj! wanted you 
iiere. You were not invited, consequently it’s not for you to grum- 
ble if you don’t find yourself perfectly comfortable and happy.’ 

“ But as he says this. Nature fell to manhandling the bailiff as if 
'she’d taken his own trade upon herself, and making one rush he lay 
over the lee rail so ill that I never saw the equal of it, even in a 
Frenchman; he twisted himself about just as if he’d been revolving 
on a corkscrew; the water blow^ing over the forward weather-rail hit 
him neatly, and he was like a streaming rag in five minutes. 

“We left him enjoying himself and went on with onr wmrk. It 
was falling dark, and not only blowing hard, but there was the look 
of a whole gale of wind in the south-west sky. The brig was 
making desperate bad weather of it under lower top-sails and 
reefed foresail, taking in the water fit to wash every movable thing 
overboard and shoving through it very slowly with a surprising 
sag to leeward. The skipper went belovv for some supper, and after 
a bit he calls rne in.” 

“ * Where’s the bailiff?’ says he. 

“ ‘ Don’t know, exactly ’ 1 says. ‘ To leeward somewheres. 
There’s a figure half over the rail just abaft the fore-rigging, if that’s 
him.’ 

“ ‘ I’ve been taming it over in my mind,’ says the skipper, ‘ and 
I’ve got a notion, Willhim,’ says he, ‘ that we’d ha’ done better not 
to bring that bailiff along with us.’ 

“ ‘ But he wouldn’t go ashore when you told him,’ says I. 

“ ‘ Quite true,’ says the captain; ‘ but that won’t make it beftter 
for us. After all, the law’s not a thing ye can take liberties with, 
and there’s something in his threat of making me purge in open 


KOrNJ) THE GALLEY FIRE. 23 

court, ‘William.’ says he, ‘ which mijjlitu’t matter it 1 kneA”^ what it 
meant; but, being ignorant, I’m willing to thiniv it alarming.’ 

Pooh!’ says 1, ‘ it’s only a lawyer’s words. There’s noUiing in 
it. They use onintelligible words to scare plain men; but there 
can’t be anything more terrifying in language ye don’t understand 
than in language ye do.” 

” ‘ 1 wish I had some book aboard tliat ’ud explain that word,’ 
says he. ‘ The bailiff ’ll know; but I’ll not ask him for fear he 
should think me afraid. But we can’t let him starve. Better send 
him here and let him get something to eat.’ 

” 1 was going to argue, but he wouldn’t listen. 

” ‘ No, no,’ says he, ‘ send him here;’ and 1 knew by that that the 
tear o’ the law was beginning to master him. 

” Well, it was my duty to obey, so 1 went on deck, and after 
rummaging about 1 found the bailiff sitting up to his hips in water 
against the scuttle-butt abreast of the galley. 

” ‘ Come along,’ says 1, ‘ supper’s in the cabin, and the captain 
wants you there. ’ 

” He stood up, but was so cramped in his limbers that he could 
scarcely shuffle along, and 1 had to drag him by the collar. When 
the captain saw by the lamplight the plight the fellow was in, his 
heart failed him altogether. There was no more proper dignified 
scorn. 

” ‘ Why,’ says he, looking at him, ‘ I didn’t think it was such a 
bad job as that,’ and he jumped up and fetched him a suit of dry 
clothes, and then poured out a dose of brandy. This was regular 
knuckling under. He had gone on con-sidering and con-sidering 
until he was in an out-and-out funk. There was no use in my say- 
ing anything. The bailiff had growd on a sudden to become the 
strongest man aboard that brig; though as for me, when 1 tell you 
that had 1 been the captain I’d have sent the fellow aloft, and kept 
him there all night, as a bint to leave sailor-men alone on future 
occasions, ye’ll allow' that my caving in wur only because 1 wasn’t 
skipper, and that’s all. AVell, sir, to cut this yarn short, luck 
turned in favor of that bailiff with a wengeance. At midnight it was 
blowing a hurricane, and the skipper said there was no good going 
on facing it, he must put back. 

-“‘There’s a handier port,’ says 1, naming it, ‘than the one- 
we’re from to make for.’ 

“ ‘ Ay,’ says he, ‘ but since we’re bound to up keeleg, it’ll look 
better to carry the bailiff slick home than to give him a railw'ay jour- 
ney. ’ 

“ It w'ould have made a hangel growl to hear the captain, all 
through fear, placing this bailiff afore the w'erry hurricane that was 
blowing, and thinking of him only whom he'd ha’ gladly drownded 
a few hours earlier, instead of the wessel and the lives aboard her. 
But reasoning was out of the question. The brig w'as just a 
smother of froth, the gale roaring like thunder, the seas as high as 
our main-top, and the old hooker shivering with every upw'ard 
heave, as if she must leave all the lower part of her behind her. It 
was a job to get the vessel round, but we managed it, and at half-past 
five o’clock in the morning we fetched the harbor we had started 


24: llOUNJ) THE GALLEY FIRE. 

from and brought up, nothing having carried away but the bailiff’s 
chimbley-pot.” 

“ And what was the result of all this?” said 1. 

” Wjiy,” said he, with a loud, rumbling laugh, ” the skipper had 
to find out what purging in hopen court means. He was brought up 
afore an old gentleman, who lectured him for about half an hour, 
said that the law was meant to be respected, and that it would be a 
bad job for any man as sneered at it; and after having talked out 
all that lay in his mind, he up and fines the captain ten pounds and 
fifty shillings costs. It served him right. He’d no business to bring 
that bailiff back. But he was hoperated on by the fear o’ words, 
and depend upon it the man who alloTvs that sort of alarm to wisit 
him is not a fit person to carry a bailiff to sea.” 


OFF THE HORN. 

The passage of the Horn has long ceased to be a thing to boast 
about. Time was when a man who had doubled that formidable 
iron headland reckoned he had performed a feat that entitled him 
to a good deal of respect. This is characteristically shown in ” Two 
Years before the Mast,” the author of which dwells at great length 
upon the struggles of the Alert among the ice in latitude 58 degrees 
South, as though he considered that part of the voyage to be some- 
thing proper to hand on to posterity in a bulky form. Hot so much 
notice is taken of the achievement nowada5’^s. It still confers priv- 
ileges; it qualifies a man to ” spit to windward,” for instance, and 
no doubt it inspires many a youthful midshipman or apprentice 
wdth much big talk and nautical airs in 4 he presence of lads who 
have yet to see with their own eyes what an Antarctic iceberg is like. 

But the passage of the Horn is much loo common an occurrence 
in these days to inflate anything but a boy. In Dana’s time a ship 
w^as a wonderful object down there; it seemed almost a deserted 
ocean; nothing was to be met but an old ” spouter ” jogging along 
with stump top-gallant masts, and her sides full of boats, ""or a cargo- 
ship, with a freight of ‘‘ notions,” bound to the Peruvian or Mexi- 
can ports. Now, if it is not so full as the Atlantic, it is pretty 
nearly as busy; for since those days Australia has grown a mighty 
and populous continent; towns have sprung up asif by magic along 
the western seaboard of the Americas; even the little remote South 
Sea Islands have lent a hand in the thronging of the great Cape 
Horn highway ; and the most desolate, sterile region in the v orld 
— such a harsh, forbidding, ice bound piece of coast as no man who 
has passed within sight of it can ever forget — is skirted, w^eek after 
week and year after year, by scores and scores of great steamers and 
sailing ships, bound west, and east, and north, if never south. The 
Panama Canal threatens the famous old route; and should that 
water-way ever be completed, the Horn will probably fall even more 
out of date than the Cape of Good Hope has. It is not to be ex- 
pected, however, that even the most ancient mariners will be found 
to mourn over the desuetude. There are many uncomfortable 
spots to be encountered in a voyage round the world; but a turn off 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


25 


the Horn, in the months which we call summer here, probahl}’ beats 
anything in the shape of marine discomforts to be found on the 
ocean. Ot course this is speakine of it as sailors find it — as it is 
experienced by the men who have to remain on deck, eo aloft, stand 
at the wheel, and whose shelter is a forecastle with the scuttle 
closed, and not a dry stitch of clothes to be found by groping. 

For it is off the Horn where the galley fire gets washed out, and 
where, therefore, the streaming and hungry watch below have noth- 
ing to eat but what they may find in the bread-barge; where the 
tears freeze in a man’s eyes faster than the most pitying angel of a 
woman living could wipe them away; where one is glad to keep 
one’s sea-boots on for tear that one’s toes may go as well as the 
boots where they are hauled oft; where everything is like sheet and 
bar iron aloft; where the very cockroaches turn in to wait for the 
equator, and the hardiest rats are so put to it with frost that they 
w'atch in the gloom until a man goes to bed and falls asleep, in the 
hope of getting a meal off his nose. Unhappily, the Horn does not 
improve. It blows and snows as hard there now as it did when the 
old Wager rounded it, and when Drake or Anson was rolling among 
its stupendous combers. Other places are more tractable. For in- 
stance, Dana, twenty-four years after he made his memorable voy- 
age, found that the climate off Point Conception had altered, that 
the south-easters w’ere no longer the curse ot the coast, and that 
vessels anchored inside at Santa Barbara and San Pedro all the year 
round. No one could have told him this of the Horn. Had he 
chosen to beat to the eastward or westward a second time, in the 
months when the attempt was made by the Pilgrim and the Alert, 
he would have found the same blinding snow-storms, the same 
hurtling seas, the same sunless, melancholy sky, the same plunging, 
washing, straining, roaring tumblification he recorded forty-two 
3''ears ago. Let the story of a brig of three hundred tons register 
bear witness to this. 

It w^as in the month of May that the vessel in question w'as bound 
to Callao with a cargo of coal, but a strong north-westerly gale had 
driven her much further to the southward than the captain had any 
desire to find himself. The gale left them on a Wednesday morn- 
ing, rolling their yard-arms into it on a real Cape Horn swell. 
What is there to which to liken these prodigious heavings? The 
actual altitude of those liquid hills may seem small in comparison 
'with the appearance they present when viewed from their hollows; 
but whatever may be their height, to lie dipping and wallowing 
among them in a vessel of the tonnage of that brig is to undergo an 
experience hardly less formidable than what was devised by the 
Mohocks, when they shut up old women in empty casks and sent 
them spinning down Ludgate Hill. What straining and groaning 
and complaining of the tortured fabric, rf it be of timber! Every 
beam, calling, treenail, transom, knee, stanchion, and futtock lifts 
up its dismal creaking and wailing voice as the bewildered craft, 
with her top-sails rattling in the motionless atmosphere, is swung 
like a pendulum up the "shoulder of the swelling mass of green 
water, leaning down as she goes until she is fairly on her beam- 
ends, with pots and pannikins, sea-bools and sea-chests, dishes, 
books, furniture, and whatever else may be inside of her, fetching 


36 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 

away with dreadful noise to leeward, amid a volley of sea-blessings 
from skipper, cook, and steward, and muffled shouts from the watch 
below in the forecastle. 

Luckily Cape Horn calms do not last very long; indeed, there is 
nothing but “ weather ” down in those regions, and a calm is only 
a short pause among the gales and squalls while they are consider- 
ing whose turn it is next. Within an hour from the time of the 
first gale failing them, another gale from a little to the north-of-west 
was bowing down the bothered and beaten brig, which, under lower 
top-sails and foretopmast-staysail, manfully struggled to look up to 
it with her head in the direction of Cape Horn and her wake stream- 
ing away over her weather quarter. It was one of those pictures of 
storm which are rarelv seen in like perfection out of the parallels 
that divide Terra del Fuego from the South Shetlands — an ocean of 
mountainous seas, raising each of them a note of thunder as their 
arching summits crashed from a dark, oil-smooth ridge of green 
water into huge avalanches of snow; a sky of gloomy slate, along 
which masses of scud— torn, ragged, .and tendril-shaped— were fly- 
ing with incredible velocity. The horizon was broken with the 
incessant rising and falling of the pyramidal billows, dark as the 
night, against a ring of sooty clouds, from which, ever and anon, 
one would break away, like a winged messenger of evil, whitening 
and veiling the air with a kind of boiling appearance as it sw'ept its 
furious and blinding discharge of snow and hail along. 

No wonder that in olden times the man who had passed these 
tempestuous and inclement seas should have considered himself an 
object of importance. Stand, in fancy, upon the deck of that labor- 
ing brig, and survey one of the countless aspects of marine life. 
The seas are breaking heavily over the port bow of the vessel, del- 
uging her forward and racing aft in a foaming torrent as she sinks 
her stern to mount the huge surge that almost lays her yard-arms 
level. The bitter, raw, flaying cold of the wind there is nothing in 
language to express. The flying spray smites the exposed face like 
a volley of sail-needles. 

Now and again a squall of snow and hail comes along with so 
much fury in it that it takes the breath away from the strongest of 
the seamen cowering with their backs to it. The rigging crackles to 
every strain put upon it like burning wood. The snow upon the 
yards makes them glimmer like lines of pallid light as they furi- 
ously sway against the dismal ground of the dark and rushing sky. 
There are spears and arrow-heads of ice upon the bulwark rail, upon 
the catheads, upon the scuttle butts lashed amidships; and though 
the seas repeatedly break over them they are always left standing. 
The helmsman, with his hard fists wrapped up in mitts, rigged out 
in oil-skins from his head to his huge, well-greased sea-boots, and 
with the after-thatch of his sou’-wesler blown up by the gale, and 
standing out from his head like the tail of a gull, gets the full of’it. 
Nothing of the man is visible but a fragment of mahogany face 
showing between the flannel ear-covers of his head-gear, and a pair 
of watering eyes, which he nowand again wipes upon his milt when 
a pause in the yaws and come-to’s gives him a chance to raise one of 
his hands from the spokes. 

How would some of our summer-water mariners appear beside 


liOUKU THE GALLEY FIRE. 27 

that salt-water sailor were they to have stood their trick at the helm 
on such an occasion as this; gazing to windward as yonder skipper 
is doing, holding on like grim death t(‘ a backstay, Mdth the salt 
dr3dng in crystals in his eyes; or making one of that oil-skinned 
group there to leeward of the galley, stamping their boots upon the 
deck to put life into their frozen toes, ducking as a shriek in the 
wind warns them of the passage of a green sheet of water over their 
heads, biting doggedly upon the tobacco in their cheeks, and growl- 
ing as they reflect that another three hours must elapse before they 
are privileged to quit the deck and take such w^armth and comfort 
as they may And in the forecastle, whose darkness is scarcel}^ re- 
vealed by the spluttering slush-lamp, and whose beams and stan- 
chions are decorated with draining clothes? 

It was already blowing two or three ordinary gales in one, and 
the lower top sails were more than the brig could safely stagger 
under, though the captain held on, since by ratching to the 
northward he might hojre to get clear of the icc, of which, on 
the previous night and that morning, some monstrous specimens 
had hove in view. Indeed, at one bell in the afternoon watch, 
during a flaw in a heavy squall of snow that was blowing in. 
horizontal lines along the sea, they caught sight on the lee bow of 
the greenish marble-like glimmer of a berg that looked to be a mile 
long and as tall as St. Paul’s Cathedrall. It vanished, but re-ap- 
peared broad on the lee beam when the squall passed, and stood out 
in its complete shape against the smoke colored gloom of the sky 
over the horizon, where, though it was four or five miles off, the men 
on the brig’s deck could see the white, steam-like haze of the spray 
that flashed in clouds from its base, and fled past it in eddying vol- 
umes, and almost imagine that they heard the thunder of the smit- 
ing surges reverberating in the hoHow^s and caverns of the mighty 
frozen mass. But when it had drawn on the lee quarter another 
squall blew up and smothered it, and after that it disappeared en- 
tirely. 

It was at this tkne that the gale increased in fury, and the sea 
grew terrible. The weather was enough to blow the masts out of 
the vessel, and all hands were turned up to slow both topsails and 
bring the brig to the wind under a small storm-staysail. How is 
the aspect of that Cape Horn ocean to be described? the rage of its 
headlong acclivities: the long sweep, of olive-green heights, piebald 
with hissing and seething tracks of foam, blown along their gleam- 
ing sides; the hard iron-gray of the heavens, out of which the storm 
of wind was rushing, bearing upon its wings masses of vapor w^hich 
it tore to pieces in its fury; and the cold— the piercing, poignant 
cold— of the gale, wdth its lashing burden of sleet and spray and 
hail? 

The men had come oil the yards after having struggled, each 
watch of them, for hard upon three quarters of an hour with the 
frozen top-sails, when the brig shipped a sea just -abaft the weather 
fore-rigging. It was a whole mountain of green water, and it fell 
in a dead weight of scores of tons upon the deck, beating for a while 
the whole life out of the devoted vessel, and making her pause, 
trembling and stunned, in the roaring liollow in which it had found 
her, while above the thunder of the dfeadtul stroke could be heard 


28 


EOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


the crash of breaking wood, of splintered glass, and the rending: 
noise of deck furniture torn from its strong fastenings. A heavy 
upward send drove the water off the decks, and all hands were 
found to be alive, holding on like grim death to whatever was next 
them; and then it was seen that a long range of the weather- bul- 
warks had been torn down flush with the deck, the cabin skylight 
broken into shivers, the long-boat amidships stove, and nothing left 
of the port quarter boat but the frame of its keel and stem dangling 
at the davits. The loss of the two boats was a bad job, but still 
worse was the terrible straining the deeply freighted vessel had 
undergone, and the destruction of the skylight, that left the cabin 
open for the floods of water that rolled along the deck. The be- 
numbed and half-frozen crew turned-to to secure what remained of 
the skylight and to cover it with tarpaulins; but while they were 
in the midst of this work the brig gave a heavy lurch, W'hich made 
the men believe it was all over with her; and before a single cry 
could have been raised, a portion of the weather fore-rigging carried 
away, and in a trice the foretopmast broke oft at the cap, and fell 
over the side— -a horrible muddle— with all its raSle of sail, yards, 
and gear. 

The early Antarctic night was now drawing down over the furi- 
ous sea, and it was already so dark that the men could hardly dis- 
cern one another’s faces. Some active fellows sprang forward at 
the risk of their lives to cut away the rigging, and release the wreck 
alongside before the yards upon it should pierce the brig’s bottom; 
and this being done, the helm was put hard up, with the idea of 
wearing ship, in order to secure the foremast. Hut the storm-fiend 
had marked this unhappy brig, and the successive blows came thick 
and fast. Scarcely was the wrecked spar sent adrift and the helm 
shifted, when all the rest of the port fore-rigging carried away, and 
the foremast fell down, carrying with it the bowsprit, main-top- 
mast, and a portion of the port main-rigging. 

By this time it was as dark as the bottom of a well ; the brig 
wallowed before the seas with a mass of wreckage over her side, 
pitching miserably in the fearful hollows, and huge surges curling 
their white heights around her. A man had need to be a seaman, 
indeed, and to have a seaman’s heart in him too, to act at all in 
such a moment as this. The full extent of the mischief could not 
be guessed. Nothing was certain but that the brig was dispossessed 
of all but her main-mast, and that there Were some heavy spars over 
the side, pounding at her like battering-rams with every hurl of the 
raging seas. The first business would be to get clear of this mis- 
chief, and the men went to work with their knives, feeling for the 
lanyards and hacking and cutting with a will. Darkness gives a 
peculiar horror to disasters of this kind at sea. In the daylight you 
can see what has happened; you can use your eyes as well as your 
hands and make dispatch, and the worst is evident. But the dark- 
ness leaves everything to be guessed at. You shout for help for 
some job too heavy for you, and it does not come. The outlines of 
the sea grow colossal by the illusion of the faint lieht thrown out 
from their breaking crests; you cannot perceive the flying water so as 
to duck away from it, and in a breath you may And yourself over- 
board. It is all distraction and uproar, loud and fearful shouting. 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


29 

and blind groping. at last the wreck was cleared, the vessel 

seemed little better than a sheer-hulk, nothing standing but her 
main-mast, upon which the main-yard swung helplessly. That she 
should have 11 red through that long and fearful Antarctic night, 
the seas combing over her, icebergs in her vicinity, and draining in 
water with every roll, must count among the miracles of the deep. 
Her people had discovered that the main-mast, having little to sup- 
port it, had worked loose, breaking away the mast-coamings, and 
starting the planking all around it; so that through this large aper- 
ture the water poured into the hold in torrents. The port pump had 
been disabled by the fall of (he masts, and the only other pump was 
manned and worked with such energy as dying men will put into 
their arms; but in less than an hour the coal choked it, and now 
nothing remained but to lighten the vessel by throwing the cargo 
overboard and baling with buckets. All through those black and 
howliuff hours, amid freezing falls of water, and in the heart of the 
raging Cape Horn storm, this severe labor was pursued, so that 
when the bleak and melancholy dawn broke upon the desolate ocean 
it found the brig still afloat, and the brave hearts in her grimly fight- 
ing death, though faint, famished, and frozen. Help came shortly 
before noon. A sail was made out heading dead for the wreck, and 
by the time she was abreast the wind and sea had so far moderated 
as to enable her to bring all the men safely off. It was not a 
moment too soon, for twenty minutes after the crew had been trans- 
ferred to the ship the brig was observed to give a heavy lurch, and 
so lie on her beam-ends, never righting, but slowly sinking in that 
position, so slowly that after her hull had vanished her main-mast 
remained forking out like the lifted arm of a drowning man. 

When this story was told me I could not help thinking of what 
the Horn route was in Dana’s time, and the very small chance that 
brig’s crew would have had for their lives had her name been the 
Filgrim, and had she been seen beating to the westward forty years 
ago. Certain it is, that however ships may come and go, and change 
the nature of their material and the form of their fabrics, the weather 
in the Pacific down there is very much what it was in Anson’s time, 
and as it has been, in all probability, since the creation of the world. 
Other climates may vary in the lapse of ages, and south- casters may 
in places be found to work themselves into north- westers. But the 
Horn remains always the same harsh, tempestuous, frozen head- 
land, echoing at this hour the hurricane notes which reverberated 
over it centuries ago, and grimly overlooking the stormiest space of 
waters in the world. Who, then, does not hope that the final con- 
struction of the Panama Canal may abridge the bleak and ice-bound 
horrors of that point of continent which looks on the chart to stretch 
its leagues and leagues of tongue into the very heart of the South- 
ern frozen waters? To be sure, the passage of the famous cape has 
long since ceased to be a wonder; but none the less is it full of 
perils to vessels which, like the brig I have written about, are at 
the mercy of the monstrous seas and furious gales of that formidable 
tract of Pacific waters. 


30 


KOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


A STHAiYGB OBASK 

One is sorry to hear of the growth of the very un-English habit 
of sheering off and scuttling away after a collision. The first duty 
of a ship-master who plumps into a vessel or is run into is to stand 
by, if the condition of his ship will permit him, and render all the 
assistance in his power. There is nothing more despicable and 
cowardly than running away after a disaster of this kind. We 
know what came of such conduct in the case of the Northjleet ; and 
week after week one reads in the shipping papers how such and 
such a vessel was run into, and how the other ship made oft, and 
how so many people were drowned in consequence. Darkness, that 
is fruitful of collisions, is also, unhappily, favorable to these mean 
and unmanly escapes. At night it mostly happens that the utmost 
you can tell of the vessel that comes grinding into your ship is that 
she is big or little, a steamer or a sailing-vessel, and rigged in such 
and such a fashion. The letters on her name-board cannot be de- 
ciphered; she will not answer your hail; and her reply to the mel- 
ancholy shout of “ For God’s sake don’t leave us! we believe we 
are sinking,” is to shift her helm and vanish in the gloom. The 
obligation to record such casualties in the log-book, or to depone 
to them before receivers of wrecks, does not, it is to be feared, always 
imply the sort of accuracy that would be useful to sufterers. From 
time to time a buoy is sunk, a light-ship run into, and the Trinity 
Corporation offer a handsome sum of money for information, but 
without avail. The absence of all reference by shipmates to such 
occurrences must make one hope that they are mainly the work of 
foreigners. But whatever the flag under which a captain sails, his 
sneaking away from a disaster in which he has had a hand ex- 
presses a species of cowardice that presses heavily upon the hum- 
bler order of ship-owners. A little coaster is run into by a fine 
large vessel, which stops a minute or twm and then proceeds. The 
master of the coaster may be her owner, and all that he has in the 
world is in his little ship. She is not sunk, but her masts are over 
the side, and she looks as if she had been for some hours under the 
guns of a fort. Whether or not the master be to blame for the col- 
lision, he is pretty sure to consider that the fault was not his; and 
his hardship is, that while he stands a chance of being ruined, he 
is unable to discover the name of the ship that ran into him, so as 
to be able to bring her owners into a court of justice, and take his 
risk as a litigant. 

1 was amused and interested some time since by hearing the story 
of the resolute behavior of Mr. .John Wbitear, master of the schooner 
Jehu, a vessel of about one hundred and fifty tons. Giving chase, 
if you can, is one way, at least, of clearing up the mystery of the 
paternity of an offending ship that sneaks off in the darkness in the 
hope of saving her owner’s pocket. Anyway, Mr. John Whitear’s 
conduct illustrates a spirit pleasant to come across in the homely 
prosaics of the marine life of to-day. Eighty and a hundred years 
ago it was men of the stamp of ^Ir. Whitear who commanded Brit- 


ROUl^D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


31 

ish privateers — otherwise how slioiild the nifiritime memorials of 
that kind of vessel be so full as they are of the unflinchinc^ obstinacy 
and the grim courage which followed the fleeing enemy over leagues 
and leagues of ocean, through storms and through calms, finally 
overhauling and boarding the breathless chase in latitudes so remote 
from the point of departure that the span between the two places 
might even now be reckoned a long voyage? 

Not very many days ago, then, the Jehu, with two hundred and 
thirty tons of coal aboard, was quietly jogging along on her way to 
her port of destination. The afternoon had been fine, and the night 
came down very clear and bright, with starlight. Tlie water was 
smooth, though a merry wind was blowing, and the little vessel, 
under easy canvas, lay softly leaning in the gloom, with the white 
water rippling and crisping past her sides in a hollow, brass-like 
tinkling. Starlight gives beauty even to a coal-man; and 1 have 
known stump top-gallant masts and sails yawning upon sheets hard 
upon a fathom horn the points in the yard-arms through which 
they lead, make as drearn-like and dainty a picture in the tender 
sobering shadows of the night as the tall and tapering rig of the 
handsomest yacht now afloat. 

At all events, the Jehu was Mr. John Whitear’s sea-home, and as 
he paced the weather side of the deck, sometimes squinting into the 
windward darkness wdiere the loom of the land hung low upon the 
vague, grayish softness of the water that way, or sometimes aloft 
where the stars, like so many benign and encouraging eyes, were 
tipping him cheerful winks through the black squares in the 
shrouds, and over the main-gaff, and among the dim tracery of the 
standing and running rigging, whose heights seemed to bring near 
the sweeping infoldment of the glittering heavens, as though tho 
vast star-laden shadow were revolving, and was weaving its circling 
burden of gloom closer and closer yet round the lonely schooner 
journeying slowly along with a bell-like resonance of broken water 
around her, he was no doubt as well satisfled with his little hooker 
as the captain of an ocean steamer could be with his stately ship. 

His pipe being smoked out, the weather looking as steady as a 
church, and all being well in every possible sense of that marine 
expression, Mr. John Whitear thought that no harm could come of 
his going below for a spell to take some rest. Accordingly, after 
exchanging a few words with his mate, and taking another good 
look to windward and then aloft, he walked to the companion and 
disappeared down the steps. But instead of going to bed like a 
landsman he kept on his boots and his coat, merely removing his 
cap as a preliminary to turning in, and stretching himself upon a 
locker, within easy hearing of the first shout that should comedown 
through the companion, he closed his eyes, and was presently con- 
tributing to the other creaking sounds raised in the plain and quaint 
little cabin by the occasional movements of the Jehu. 

How it came about he cuuld not say, not having been on deck at 
the time; but while helay dreaming such peaceful dreams as should 
visit a master- mariner whose whole professional life is dedicated to 
the careful attention of the three L’s, he was suddenly aroused, and 
in some measure startled, by a loud and fearful cry in the com- 
panion of “ Below, there! here’s a bark running into as!” 


32 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


Fortiin.'itely, Mr. Wbitear had no occasion to stay to dress him- 
self; in a breath he was up the ladder and on deck. The first thing 
he saw was a large bark on the port bow, apparently paying off, 
having just gone about. Fresh as he was from a deep sleep, Mr. 
'Whitear had all his wits about him in a moment; and he immedi- 
ately perceived that, let him do what he liked and shout as he 
would, a collision was unavoidable. The bark loomed up large and 
massive in the darkness. Her lights were as plainly to be seen as the 
stais, while the Jehu's burnt as brightly. The wind had freshened 
soinewbat, and both vessels were heeling under it. All was silent 
aboard the bark, not the least sound could be heard, and in that 
thrilling and breathless moment all other noises took a startling dis- 
tinctness — the washing of water, the creaking of spars, the squeak 
up in the darkness of a sheave upon a rusty pin. There is no sen- 
sation comparable to what is felt in the few minutes which elapse 
between the approach and shock of two meeting vessels. A rail- 
way collision gives you no time. If by chance you look out of the 
carriage- window and see what is going to happen, before you can 
sing out the thing has come and is over. But a collision at sea 
furnishes you with leisure to think, to anticipate, and to make an 
agony of the disaster before it actually befalls you. Whichever way 
the helm of the Jehu had been jammed would have been all the 
same; the bark was bound to come, and in a few moments there 
she was, with her bows towering like a cliff over the low bulwarks 
of the well-freighted Jehu, her jib-boom and bowsprit arching across 
the little schooner’s deck like a great spear in the hand of a giant. 

The Jehu heeled over under the blow until the rail of her star- 
board bulwarks was flush with the water. The men came skurry- 
ing, half-naked out of the forecqijirtle, thinking she was sinking, and 
rushed aft to be out of the wAy of whatever might tumble down 
from aloft. You heard the grinding noise of crushed wood, the 
thud of falling gear, the tearing of canvas. The weight of the bark, 
that was a big ves.sel in ballast, swept the stern of the little Jehu to 
windward, rounding her in such a manner as to free them both. 
But by this time there was plenty of noise and activity to be noted 
aboard the bark. Orders were rattled out in plain English, and you 
could hear the scampering of feet and the songs of the seamen as 
they ran to and fro and pulled and hauled. She heeled over like a 
great shadow, with her main -yards square and her fore-sheets 
flattened in. It was impossible to know what mischief she had 
done; and, running to the side, Mr. Whitear shouted to her at the 
top of his voice to stand by them, as he feared the schooner was sink- 
ing. 

No answer was returned. 

“They’re leaving us!’* cried the mate. “Look! they’re trim- 
ming sail— they’re swinging the main-yards.’’ 

Again Mr. Whitear bawled to them not to abandon the schooner, 
but no answer was vouchsafed, and in a few moments it was not 
only seen that she was leaving them, but that she meant to get away 
as fast as she could, for they loosed their foretop-gallant sail and 
main-royal, and sheeted the canvas home with all expedition. 

Under such circumstances most men would have contented them- 
selves with bestowing a sea-blessing on the stranger, and then 


38 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 

tiiroeil-to tn sound the well, anil, if the schooner was leaking? fast, 
the boats over. But Mr John Whitear was made ot the old 
and, as some people mi.c^ht think, the right kind of stuff. 

“ Bill,” says he to William T)art. A.B., who was at the wheel, 
“ keep your eye upon that old catermerang while me and the matt* 
overhauls the schooner. Follow her without a.wink, William, for 
if there’s a creak left in this old bucket we’ll stick to her skirts and 
have her name, though she should go all on sailing till we comes to 
Australey.” 

Forthwith he and the mate went to work, sounded the well, 
looked over the side, peered at the damage done aloft, and then 
coming aft again, “ She’s tight, and she’s right, boys,” said IMr 
Whitear. ” Kow, bullies, here’s a mess that’s to cost some one 
pounds and pounds. That some one’s not to be John Whitear; so, 
William, starboard your helm, my lad; and the rest of ye all tuin- 
to and make sail forrard, every stitch ye can find, ami then we’ll 
repair the main- rigging, and get a new main-sail bent;” for he had 
discovered that the bark’s jibboom had cut through the center 
cloths of the main-sail, ripping it open from the head to the second 
reef-band as neatly as if a sail-maker’s knife has done the job. 

They all went to work with a will, putting uncommon agilit}’’ 
into their limbs and spirits by calling the shadow ahead many hard 
salt names, and swearing they would catch her if she carried them 
into the Polar regions. The labor was severe, for there were not 
many of them to “ tiijn-to;” nevertheless, they managed, in a time 
less by three-quarters tlian they would have occupied on any other 
.occasion, to repair the damaged shrouds, set up preventer back- 
stays, bend a new main-sail, and cover the lit't-le vessel with canvas. 
The bark was close-hauled, three or four miles ahead, on the port 
tack, lying over, as a light vessel will in such a merry breeze as \^as 
then blowing, under both royals and gaflf-top-sail ; she was trusting 
to her heels, and running away like a big bully from a little man 
whom he has accidentally hurt, and is afraid of. Her people wouK! 
probably ridicule the idea of the deep-freighted schooner chasing 
them; indeed, they had left her apparently helpless, her port main 
rigging hanging in bights over the side, her main-sail in halves, and 
the whole fabric looking wrecked and Stunned from the shock ot 
the collision. 

Meanwhile, Mr. John Whitear stumped the quarter-deck of his 
little craft, often pausing to point an old leather-covered telescope 
at the leaning shadow out away under the low-shining stars just 
the merest trifle to leeward of the lee knight-head, and then cock- 
ing the glass under his arm afresh, and swinging round with a 
sharp, obstinate stamp of the foot to resume his walk. 

” Boys,” he sung out, ” there’s no occasion for the watch belov.^ 
to remain on deck.” 

” ISo, no,” was the gruff answer; ” there’s no going below tiK 
we’ve found out that vessel’s name.” 

The wind came along with a fresh, strong sweep, and a deep 
moan in the gusts as they blew over the bulwark rail into the hollow 
glimmer of the great main-sail ; there was a kind ot flashful light 
in the breaking heads of the little black surges, and a regular rise 
and lall ot fountain-like sound from forward, where the stem of 


34 


EOUJ^-D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


tbft driven schooner was hissing through the dark water, and the 
wake ran away astern like a snow-covered road, until, looking at it, 
you seemed to see the dark water on either side stand up as if the 
white vein were the frothing stream of a cataract rushing into dark- 
ness belwixfthe shadows of hills. 

“ Why, smother me, it she’s not got the scent of us!” suddenly 
cried Mr. Whitear, with the glass at his eye; “she’s off three 
points, and there’s no luff left in her! Boys, did any of you lake 
notice if she had her stunsail-booms aloft?” 

“No,” answered William Dart, “her foreyards were just up 
yonder ” (pointing into the air), “ an’ I’ll take my oath she’d got noj 
booms on ’em.” 

“ Then we’ll run her down yet; we’ll have her!” cried Mr. Whitear, 
fetching his knee a slap that sounded like the report of a pistol. 
“ Keep her away a bit; ease off the sheets fore and aft. Hurrah, ray 
lads! t\\Q Jehu knows the road! We’ll weather the sneak, boys!’' 
and so he rattled on, sometimes talking to his men, sometimes to 
the schooner, and sometimes addressing the bark ahead. 

Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, however, four or five 
sail in a- vessels hove in sight and bothered Mr. Whitear exceedingly, 
for there was a chance of mistaking the chase among them and pur^ 
suing the wrong vessel. All hands were implored to keep a bright 
lookout, and the glass was now much more often at the skipper’s 
e3"e than under his arm. It is strange enough to think of a little 
collier with two hundred and thirty tons of coal in her bottom pur- 
suing a vessel three times her size. It might really pass as a most 
satirical travesty of the old maritime business, were it not for the^ 
very strong commercial instincts at work in it. The purse was al- 
ways as great a power on sea as on land, and the flight of the big 
bark from the little coal-man was onl}’’ another illustration of its 
supremacy. 

To the great satisfaction of Mr. Whitear, the schooner turned 
out to be more than a match for the cowardly runaway. It was 
quite clear that the bark had no more sad to set; as it was, she was 
bowling along under a press of canvas that must have made her 
decks mighty uncomfortable, to judge from the sharp angle of her 
inclination. Had she chosen to put her helm up and bring the 
wind well aft, she would no doubt have walked away from the 
schooner, whose fore-and-aft canvas then would not have much 
helped her. But the bark could not forget that she had to wmrk her 
w^ay to windward, and that her port lay north-east and not south- 
w^est, and though she might slacken away her lee braces in the hope 
of making the obstinate little schooner give up, it would not answer 
her purpose to do more than that. 

Inch by inch the Jehu crawled up to her. Just before daybreak 
the wind breezed up like a squall, though the sky was clear, and 
Mr. Whitear, who all through the night had watched the chase 
with the iiitentnessof an old British commodore following a squad- 
ron of Frenchmen, shouted out that she had taken in her royals 
and gaff-topsail, and that, as it was, she was nearly out of water 
to windward. But not so much as a rope-yarn was touched aboard 
\.\\Q Jehu ; she had never been so pressed since the hour that she 
w^as launched. She hove up the foam as high as the head -boards; 


ROUlsD THE GALLEY EIRE. 


35 

every bone of her trembled; the wind boomed away from under 
the foot of her sails in a thunder-note, and the sheets and weather 
standing-ri^i'ing stood like bars of iron. There seemed as much 
eagerness in her shivering, rushing frame as in her skipper, whose 
excitement deepened as the square and leaning shadow ahead 
loomed bigger and bigger. Earnestly was it to be hoped that the 
port main-rigging would stand all this straining; and yet such 
was the temper of the captain, and the men of the brave little 
Jehu, that 1 believe, had the main-mast gone overboard, they would 
have held on after the bark with a single spar; just as 1 once saw 
a man with one arm and a wooden leg give chase to a rogue who 
had sneered at his misfortunes. 

The faint gray of the dawn was in the sky when the bark was 
brought to the wind again, and, after holding on for a short while 
with a close luff, went about. Before she had her fore-yards braced 
round' the schooner had stayed, and was on ilie starboard tack, 
savagely breaking the quick seas, which were rolling in the wake 
of the wind, and finding all the advantage she needed in the 
weathering she had made upon the bark, who, with the rising of 
the sun, appeared to lose all heart, for no more sail was made, and 
when she was braced up she was kept so close that the weather 
halt of her foretop-gallant sail was aback. The white sunshine 
that had flung a deep blue oyer the stars, and transformed the 
ocean into a tumbling green surface full of sparkles and white 
lines, and a horizon so clear that it was like the sweep of a brush 
dipped in bright green paint along the infolding azure of the 
morning sky, gave stout-hearted Mr. John Whitear a good sight 
of the tall vessel he had been chasing all through the middle and 
morning watches. She was what he called “ a lump of a bark,” 
so light that half her metal sheathing was out of water, with very 
square yards and a main skysail-mast, and she tumbled with such 
unwieldy motions upon the running seas that it seemed no longer 
wonderful that the Jehu should have been able to weather and fore- 
reach upon her. Her way was almost stopped by the gripe of her 
luff, and within an hour of the time of her going about the schooner 
was on her weather-quarter. 

Mr, Whitear, had already deciphered her name upon her stern ; 
but he had some questions to ask, so, jumping on to the rail and 
clawing a backstay with one hand while he put the other hand to 
his mouth, he bawled out,“ Bark ahoy!'’ 

*' Halloo!” was the answer. 

” What’s the name of your vessel?” sang out Mr. Whitear, 

” Have you forgotten how to read, skipper? It’s under your 
nose,” came the reply. 

” You’re the bark Juno, of Maitland, N. S. ; that’s clear enough 
on your starn,” shouted Mr. Whitear, whose temper, inflamed by 
the long pursuit, was not improved, as may be supposed, by this 
reception; “and you’re the vessel that ran into us last night, and 
carried away our shrouds and braces, and running-gear, the main- 
rail, top-gallant bulwarks, anil split our main-sail.” 

” No, we ain’t,” w^as the reply. “ We know nothing of the job 
you’re talking about; so sheer off, will ye, and take care to spot 
the right party. afore letting fly.” 


36 


jaOUNJ) THE GALLEY FlllE. 


Without answering, Mr. Whitcar shitted his helm so as to bring 
his vessel to leeward ot the bark; and then, running forward, when 
the schooner had forged abreast ot the other vessel, he shouted to 
the man who had answered his hail to look over the port bow ot 
the bark and there he would see the marks ot the schooner’s chain- 
plate bolts, while further evidence ot the bark being the culprit lay 
in particles of her planking adhering to the Jehu’s chain-plates. 
This was too decisisve to admit ot further denial; and Mr. John 
Whitear, having obtained all the information he required, walked 
att again, once more shifted his helm, saluted the bark with a 
farewell flourish of his fist, and then gave orders to his men to trim 
sail and head for the port to which they were bound. 


A SALVAGE JOB. 

Amokg the most picturesque and lively incidents ot the sea 
are those of the encountering of abandoned vessels, and the strug- 
gles ot the people who board them to carry them into port. Were 
it not for the imperative injunctions of owners, and the various 
obligations imposed upon ship-masters, b}" the terms of -charter- 
parties, policies, and the like, there is no doubt that we should hear 
very much oftener than we now do of the xu'eservation ot derelicts 
and their cargoes. The mariner often stumbles upon some sub- 
stantial prize in this way: A ship is sighted, low in the water, with 
nothing standing, perhaps, but the stump of her foremast. A spell 
at the x»umps eases her, she is overhauled, and her hold seen to be 
full of valuable cargo. She is taken in tow’, and after several days, 
or perhaps weeks, of maneuvering, she is carried into port and found 
to be w’orth some thousands of pounds, a goodly portion of which 
goes to the men w'ho navigated her into a place ot safetj'. There 
is a touch of romance in such findings that never fails to render 
them amusing and even exciting reading; and as stories they are 
often rich in a high kind of marine chaiacteristics. 

One of these yarns, 1 remember, imoressed me greatly at the 
lime. The master ot a vessel, called the Fides, sighted a Dutch 
bark water-logged. On approaching her only one man was to be 
seen on board. He proved to be the skipper, who said that his 
crew had refused to remain by the vessel, and had left him alone 
in her. He was brought aboard the but had not been there 

ten minutes when he begged to be sent to his water-logged bark 
again. His entreaties were so moving that the captain of the Mdes 
yielded, and he was once more put in possession of his wreck and 
iett there. Next day a vessel, called the Ballater, took him ofiT, 
and the wonder was that the poor fellow had ever managed to keep 
his life on the deck of the w^ave-swept hulk. Here, in the most 
obscure form in the Avorld, is an exhibition of the sailor’s loyalty 
to his ship so great as to make a truly heroical figure ot that Dutch 
captain. 

Narratives which recount the meeting with derelicts and their 
conveyance to port often reveal some of the best qualities of the 
sailor— I mean his indifference to peril, his capacity of dtlemiiued 


KOUXD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


37 

labor, his triumph over forces whose antagonism would leave 
most laudsmeu helpless and hopeless. Such was the story of the 
Caledonia, a prize crew from which took charge of the brig 
Emily, and, after ten days of fierce battling with violent gales of 
wind in a vessel iury-rigged and half full of water, were eventually 
forced to abandon her. Such was the voyage of five men in the 
derelict bark Thor, of Tvedestrand, laden with scrap-iron and oil- 
casks. Tliey had to rig a jury-rudder to get her to sail, and for 
nearly a fortnight struggled with heavy weather and baffling winds, 
eventually being shipwrecked near youghal, and narrowly escap 
ing with their lives only to witness the craft they had desperately 
labored to save go to pieces among the rocks. 

Not very long since a ship-rigged vessel of nine hundred tons 
was proceeding on her voyage to one of the West India Islands. 
The weather had been calm and thick through the liight, with a 
long swell rolling up from the westward, and the morning broke 
with a fiery sun, red as that luminar}’’ is at his setting, and a 
mountainous heave of the sea that in the wake of the orb rolled in 
billows of molten gold, giving a kind of dreadful splendor to the 
ha^y morning, with its faint and tarnished sky, and the sickly green 
of the swelling and foamless deep, and the stubborn belt "of haze 
that hung like the grayish shadow of rain upon the horizon, save 
where the sun loomed like a blood-red shield as he floated heavily 
out of the deep. There were a hundred signs to betoken a gale at 
hand, and preparatory measures were accordingly taken aboard the 
ship. All the light canvas and the main sail were furled, and 
single reefs tied in the top-sails. Never was such rolling. The 
draught of air had no weight to steady the vessel; she fell into the 
liollow of the swell, and from side to side she swayed as each pon- 
derous liquid fold caught and hove her over, the water busting in- 
board in smoke through her scupper-holes, the shrouds creaking 
with the tension of the strain as though they would draw the chain- 
plates like pliant wire, and every beam, strong fastening, and bulk- 
head added their groaning notes to the general clamor of the labor- 
ing hull and the beating canvas. B}*- nine o’clock the sun had van- 
ished under an expanse of slate-colored cloud that hung over the 
whole surface of the deep; but yet another hour elapsed before the 
gale burst, and then it came along in a voice of thunder, and over 
a surface of milk-wiiite whalers. With the upper top-sail hal^'ards 
Jet go, and hands by the lower top-sails sheets, the ship leaned 
down to it until the foam was up to a man’s shoulders in the lee 
scuppers; but they managed to get her to pay off, and presently she 
was speeding like an arrow on the wings of the tempest, piling the 
foam as high as her figure-head, her main-top-sail blown in rags 
out of the bolt-ropes, and sheets of spray fogging her decks like 
bursts of vapor from a boiler. 

The next thing to do was to bring her to the wind before the sea 
rose; the crew went aloft to stow the top-sails and trap what re- 
mained of the main-top-sail upon the yard; and after a little there 
was the ship with nothing on her but a small storm-trysail, bowing- 
and shearing at the huge surges wdiich the storm had lifted in cones 
and pyramids, and which were now pouring and breaking with a 
terrible roaring noise. All day and tar into the night the storm 


38 


ROUA^D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


blew without iDtermission, but it broke in the middle watch, and 
then fined down so rapidly that at eight o’clock in the morning the 
ship was pursuing her course under whole top sails and top-gallant 
sails, and courtesying over the long heave of the sea, wdiose green 
seemed to sparkle after the purification of the tempest, and whose 
beautiful arching coils were brilliant wdth the diamond like flashing 
of the foam chipped out of the emerald acclivities by the keen teeth 
of the clear, fresh northeast wind. 

Shortly after noon the watch on deck had come out of the fore- 
castle after eating their dinner, when a small brig was made out 
right ahead, apparently standing athwart the ship’s hawse. On 
approaching her it was seen that she was drifting, and that though 
there might be people aboard, she was not under control. Aloft 
she was in a state of great contusion, her fore-yards squared and 
her after-yards braced as wildly as the leaches of the canvas would 
allow. The davit falls w^ere overhauled to the water’s edge, and 
all the boats were gone. Here and there ends of her running- 
rigging trailed overboard, and as she rolled heavily in the trough 
of the sea the sound of her flappin^canvas threw a wild and melan- 
choly echo athwart the breeze. The master of the ship loudly 
hailed her, and all eyes were eagerly fastened upon the brig to ob- 
serve if there were any indications of life in her. Possibly nothing 
so heightens the mournful and tragical suggestions of an abandoned 
vessel as the loud hail of a passing ship and the death-like stillness 
following, unbroken save by the hollow beating of canvas, the 
drowning sob of swelling water, and the creak of straining timbers. 

It was very evident that nothing alive was in the brig, and the 
master of the ship, after consulting with his mate, decided on send- 
ing a boat. Accordingly, the second mate and a couple of seamen 
w’^ent over the side, ancl, after some hard rowing and careful dodg- 
ing of the seas, they gained the brig and scrambled upon her deck. 
They found that she was damaged to an extent that could not be 
imagined by inspection of her from the ship. Her galley and cabin 
skylights were smashed in, bulwark stanchions were started, and, 
in addition to various other injuries, there were three feet of water 
in the hold. Whether she h'ad drained this water into her from the 
deck, or whether it was due to a leak, could not at once be ascer- 
tained; it was certain at least that her hold was full of cargo, and 
that' it was of a nature that would not enable her to float should 
the water gain upon her. These facts were reported by the second 
mate, who added that he could find no papers belonging to the ves- 
sel, and that she had been stripped of all her provisions. 

“ It seems a pity to leave her knocking about here,” shouted the 
captain. ‘‘ It’ll be another man’s job if we don’t tackle it. Do 
you see your way to carry her to Fayal?” then distant about four 
hundred miles. 

The second mate conversed with the two men w^ho were with 
him, and, after a little while, called out, ” Ay, we’ll risk it.” 

On this the two seamen w^ere ordered to come along-side, when 
some provisions, water, a sextant, chart, and other needful articles 
%vere lowered into the boat. Wilh these they put off, receiving a 
loud, encouraging cheer from the rest of the ship’s crew; and. on 


KOUXD THE GALLEY EIRE. 


39 

reaching the brig’s side, hoisted out the provisions, and hooked ou 
the boat and dragged her up to the davits. The ship stood by for 
a while, w’atching the plucky fellows, and perhaps suspecting that 
they might repent their undertaking, for even with a dry bottom 
the brig might have been reckoned a big navigating job for three 
men. She rolled heavily and continuously, her canvas striking 
the masts with loud reports, and making the light spars buckle, 
and as she lifted her shining sides out of the bright green seas the 
water was seen to gush from her bulwarks in a manner to prove the 
wrenching they had undergone from the recent tempest. There 
was no show of misgiving or repentance, however, on the part of 
the men. Having hoisted their boat they turned-to and trinmied 
the yards, clapping the jigger on to the top-sail halyards, and giv- 
ing everything a good spread. The little vessel took the wind, 
slightly heeled, and came round to her course for the Western 
Islands, and the last thing the ship, as she filled and stood on her 
voyage, saw of the brig was the second mate at the wheel, the two 
men toiling at the brake-pump amidships, and the little vessel under 
fore and main top-gallant sails heavily swinging over the long ocean 
swell, throwing the foam from her deep, round bows, and looking 
but the merest toy amid the vast surface of undulating waters which 
leaned away into the furthest reaches of the sky. 

A crew of thiee men leaves, with one at the wheel, only two to 
do the ship’s work. Four or five seamen would not have been too 
many to handle that brig’s main-sail alone, and a gale of wind 
might therefore oblige the second mate and his two companions to 
put their helm up and run for it, and leave the canvas to blow away 
with a blessing upon it before they could bring the vessel to. Four 
hundred miles seem but a short voyage nowadays; but a head-wind 
mighi enlarge the period of such a journey into weeks, in which 
case, unless these men met with help— which, though very likely, 
was by no means certain — they were bound lo perish of starvation, 
as the quantity of provisions supplied to them by the ship could 
not, however economically used, outlast four or live days. It is 
just because a sailor would keenly understand all the heavy risks 
and difficulties comprised in such an adventure as these three men 
had engaged in, that the courage implied in this and many other 
attempts of the same kind to save property found at sea deserves a' 
good place in the annals of naval heroism. A half-hour’s spell at 
the pumps satisfied them that by regular application the water 
might be kept under, though there could be no longer any doubt 
that the vessel was leaking, either from a started butt or some 
puncture below the water-line. A tarpaulin was found and secured 
over the broken skylight, as a provision against dirty weather; the 
galley fire was lighted and the decks cleared up, and there being an 
old reel-log near the wheel, along with a sand-glass, they managed 
among them to heave it — the second mate at the helm holding the 
glass— and discovered that the brig was making a little less than 
four knots. But the weather kept fine, and this .supported the men’s 
courage, as did also their assurance one to another that the}’’ were 
bound to be well rewarded for the risks they were running. They 
had another spell at the pump, and then fetched a bit of the ship’s 
beef that had been put lo cook in the galley copper, and bringing it 


40 


KOUis^D -THE GA*LLEY FERE. 


att with some biscuit, mnde out a tolfrable meal, the mate steerins: 
with one hand and eating with the other. 

The day passed quietly, but the wind was light, and the proscress 
made was small. The duty of keeping the pump going at reirular 
intervals grew exhausting, but it was absolutelj^ necessary that the 
quantity of water should be kept under the depth found in the bi ig 
when she was boarded, and every hour throughout the day the 
harsh clank of the pump might be heard, ceasing after an interval, 
when the. men, pale with fatigue, and with the sweat streaming from 
their faces, flung themselves upon the deck breathless and spent. 
The breeze freshened at sunset, and the top-gallant sails w^ere taken 
in. The night came down very dark, with a few misty stars here 
and there, and a flavor in the swing of the wind as it blew in gusts 
over the bulwarks that was a promise ot bad weather. The weight 
of the water in the little vessel, coupled with the cargo, that came 
flush with the main-hatch, sunk her deep, and as the sea rose her 
behavior grew wild. The billows tumbled against her weather-bow, 
and such was her inelasticity that at times she would not rise to 
them, but let them roll over her forecastle, burying herself pretty 
nearly as far aft as her foremast, and flooding, her decks to the 
wheel. 

Fortunately her upper works were stanch, or she must have been 
drowned again and again by the seas which, tumbled in tons’ weight 
over her head. The men made shift to stow the upper top-sails 
before it came on hard, but they could do nothing with the lower can- 
vas, which must blow away it it would not stand. This the foretop- 
sail did shortly after ten o’clock in a squall ot wind; the weather- 
sheet parted, and in a few moments the sail was in rags, increasing 
the roaripg noise of the gale and the crashing sound of the sea by 
the fierce whipping ot the tattered clotlis. 

Amid all this confusion and wild scene of the black heavens and 
glimmering heights of water the men betook themselves again and 
again to the pum])8, and the metallic ring ot the working brake 
flung a dismal note of shipwreck into the harsh uproar of the war- 
ring elements. 

It is difficult to realize' a sterner picture ot struggle, a more furi- 
ous array of perils. Here were three men as crew of a vessel which 
wanted a good nine hands to work her, exhausted by pumping, and 
yet obliged regularly to apply themselves to the pump to keep the 
vessel afloat, forced by this work, or by having to tend the helm, to 
remain unsheltered upon the decks over which the seas were burst- 
ing in whole oceans; wet through to the skin, without the means 
of obtaining a warm drink, and without the chance of preserving 
a dry stitch even were an opportunity afforded them to change their 
clothes; a black and howling void overhead, and below a huge 
broken sea, in whose thunderous hollow^s the little vessel labored 
like a drowning thing, one moment upright and becalmed by the 
towering coil of a rushing surge, the next on her beam-ends on the 
summit ot the liquid height, with the full force ot the gale howling 
through her rigging, and the spray from the breaking heads of the 
near combers sweeping over her decks upon the breath of the black 
and ringing wind like a furious snow-storm. 

In the limits assigned here it is impossible to do justice to this 


KOUisD TI1E^GAJ.1J:Y I'iUE. 


41 


fitrug^le. To make it a conceivable thing to the landsman’s intelli- 
gence somelhing of photographic minuteness is ■wanted in the repro- 
duction: the picture of the men leaving the pumps and crawling, 
along the deck to the wheel, their talk, their post ures as they sat 
crouching and listening to the infernal din in the ebony void on 
high— a hundred such matters indeed— together with the outline of 
the vessel, revealed for a breathless space, as she swooped into a 
trough with a headlong shearing of the bows that made the water 
boil in whiteness which flung a kind ot twilight round about, in 
which the ink-like configuration of the straining and beaten fabric 
was thrown up as though a gleam ot pallid moonshine had broken 
through the dense vapors of the storm and fallen for an instant into 
the swirling and creaming hollow in which the Wg lay weltering. 
That the deeply laden and half drowned vessel should have outlived 
that night was a real miracle. 

Fierce as had been the preceding storm encountered by the ship, 
this gale had at times an edge in it that the other wanted. Hap- 
pily, like its predecessor, it was short-lived, and blew itself out 
soon after daybreak, though it left such a tremendous sea behind 
that for several hours after the wind had sobered down into a top- 
gallant breeze the brig M^as in the utmost jeopardy. The rolling 
was so frightful that the men could do nothing aloft. The mate 
refused to allow them to leave the deck, expecting every instant to 
see the mast go over the side. 

It was almost impossible to stand at the pumps; sometimes the 
little vessel would literally disA a sea over her rail that swept the 
two seamen oil their legs, and forced the mate, who gras])ed the 
wheel, lo hold on to the spokes for dear life; and it was as much as 
their necks were worth to let go for a moment. By noon, how- 
ever, the swell had greatly subsided, and the men made shift to set 
the main and upper foretop-sails and top-gallant sails, and to board 
the forelack. The male also got an observation which enabled him 
to set his course. But the night that was passed had almost done 
for them; they could scarcely stand, and crawled about like sick 
men; and such was their pass that when the mate, laying hold of 
the pump, sung out to one of his companions to come and lend 
him a hand, the reply wag that if the pumping was to depend upon 
Mm, the bloominc hooker might as well sink at once, as there wa,s 
not strength enough left in him to kill a flea; and it was not until 
the mate and the other man who stood at the wheel had consumed 
tw^enty minutes in entreaties, curses, and other marine rhetoric, that 
the exhausted creature was induced to “ tail on.” 

Fortunately for the poor fellow's, the wind had shifted into a 
quarter favorable for their voyage; they dried their clothes, cooked 
some beet, and managed to snatch sufficient rest between the inter- 
vals of pumping to give them back something of their strength. 
Everything went on well until they were about forty miles dis- 
tant from Fayal, when the wind backed, and blew a fresh breeze 
right ahead. * This was maddening enough. They braced the yards 
hard up, packed all that they could hoist upon the vessel, and 
swore that, come what might, they would not slacken a halyard 
nor touch a sheet though it should blow fit to prize the old butter- 
box out of the water, 


KOUI^D THE GALLEY FI HE. 


42 

It was not lonff after this that a steamer hove in sight, and proba- 
bly suspecting a case of»<listre8S by the look of the brig aloft — for 
the rags of the lo’^ er foretop-sail still fluttered upon the 5 ^ard— 
slowed her engines to speak the little vessel. “ What ship is that?” 
was asked. The name was given and the circumstances related. 
The steamer then offered to give the brig a drag towuira Fayal ; l)ut 
when it was understood that a share in the salvage would be ex- 
pected, the second mate sung out no, they wanted no help, they had 
scraped through it all right so far, and were willing to venture the 
remaining risks. Thereupon the steamer procceeded, but had not 
sunk her hull when the wind again shifted and enabled the brig to 
look up for her uprt with the breeze full abeam; and within nine 
hours from the tiinl of having been spoken by the steamer, the pilot 
had boarded her, and she was safely moored at the west end of Fayal 
Bay. The value of the brig and cargo proved to be sixteen hundred 
pounds and when the award came to be made, four hundred pounds 
were given to the owners of the ship that had boarded the brig, one 
hundred pounds to the master and crew of the ship, and a substan- 
tial sum to the second mate and his two men. 


A CHANNEL INCIDENT. 

The captains of the steamers which ply as passenger and cargo 
vessels between London and the French ports are a class of men 
familiar in a more or less degi’ee to most of us, and it is probably 
this familiarity that prevents us from dwelling, with the emphasis 
that is deserved, upon the singular skill they exhibit, day after day, 
and year after year, in carrying their ships through what may be 
fairly called the most dangerous waters in the world, with scarcely 
a misadventure to vary the chronicles of their little voyages. By 
night and by day they are threading the intricacies of the crowded 
river Thames, groping through white mists so thick that a buoy 
must be along-side before it can be seen; struggling against sudden 
bursts of furious Channel weather, which bring up the most abomi- 
nable kind of sea that a sailor can tumble about in — short, roaring 
cross surges, which seem to knock the very breath out of the paddle 
steamer, sloping her funnel like the hciton in the hand of a band 
conductor, submerging one paddle-wheel to let the other revolve 
like' a windmill out of water, and blowing up in storms of snow 
from the sponsons, while the worried vessel pitches savagely into 
the narrow hollows, flinging up her stern like the hind-legs of a colt 
that takes fright at a passing train, her tarpaulins streaming with 
w^et, the escape-pipe blowing as she reels, a few sea-sick passengers 
wet through att,two or three seamen in oil-skins dodging the seas for- 
ward, and the skipper on the bridge holding on to the rail with 
both hands, and wonderng what that confounded old Oeordie right 
ahead is up to, coming along with square yards and his patched 
boom-foresail bellying out like a sailor’s shirt drying in the fore- 
stay as if the whole of the Channel were his private property, and 
it was his duty to run over anything that got in his road. 

Take the trip to Boulogne alone.” In fine, clear weather it is all 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE, 


45 


plain sailini^, no doubt. But if a passenger wants to appraise the 
merits ot these captains rightly, let him quit the pitch-dark deck, 
and a night so black and thick that it is a positive relief to the eye 
when a shower ot sparks breaks out of the funnel and blows away 
into the ebony gloom to leeward, and go below into the bright, 
warm cabin, and overhaul a chart ot the mouth of the Thames and 
the adjacent waters as far as the South Sands Head light. Why, the 
sight is bewildered by the mere look of that chart. It is as though 
a spider had got foul of an ink-bottle, and had been cleaning its 
legs on a large sheet of white paper. West and East Girdlers, 
Margate Sands, Long Sands, Sunk Sands, Goodwin Sands — it 
seems to be all sand; while the soundings are more alarming still — 
eleven fathoms here, and close against it, one fathom — the English 
of which is blue-lights, rockets, hovellers, life-boats, and Board-of- 
Trade inquiries. Jones, asleep in his little state cabin, knows noth- 
ing of the maze of perils through which he is being steered: he will 
rise in the morning and take his seat at the breakfast-table, and in 
the composed features of the brown-faced, hearty-looking captain 
who sits modestly eating a rasher of bacon, he will find no trace or 
hint ot a vigil which began at London Bridge and which will not 
terminate until Boulogne is reached, though perhaps— the Good- 
wins being astern, and neither the Varne nor the Ridge being very 
much in the road— the hardest part of it may be said to be over. 

But the dangers of the English Channel are by no means limited 
to shoals and foul weather. If those were all, the captains who 
safely carry hundreds upon hundreds of passengers to and fro in 
the course of the 3^ear would have to abate something of the piaiso 
to which their excellent skill and remarkable vigilance entitle them. 
In truth, a danger more to be feared than shallow water and tem- 
pestuous weather is collision. 1 am not speaking of the- daytime 
and fine weather; though even in the daytime and in fine weather 
collisions at sea will happen through a dozen circumstances more 
absolutely unavoidable tlian the most apparently unavoidable rail- 
way collision ever attributed by a coroner’s jury to pure accident. 
It is the thick and silent night that is most haunted by this deadly 
peril. There is no wind, but a drenching drizzle drops unseen, save 
in the haze of the cabin skylight, from a black heaven that seems to 
rest its ponderous burden on the slender mast-heads of the creeping 
steamer. It is the English Channel, the great maritime highway 
that leads to all parts ot the world, and now as ever it is crowded 
■with shipping; and through this mighty shadowy full ot hidden life 
and hidden danger, those captains 1 am writing of must bring their 
vessels, day after day, week after week. They must not lag, for 
lime is precious to their owners. Their unscathed emergence year 
after year must surely savor of the miraculous to any man who will 
but give his mind to the character of the dangers through w'hich 
these sailors steer their vessels in safety. As a sample ot this par- 
ticular peril ot collision, let me give an instance— a recent one. It 
may remove reference from all risk ot misapprehension if 1 say at 
once that the steamer was from Bilboa bound to a North-country 
port. 

She was abreast of Beacb^ Head when the night fell, and the 
fresh southerly wind, suddenly shitting to the westward in a little 


44 


KOUXD THE C4 ALLEY EIRE, 


squall, dropped. During the latter portion ot the afternoon the 
weather had been slowly thickening, but when the wind went the 
haze rolled up all round like smoke, blackening the moonless night 
until the very foam breaking away from under the counter was a 
scarcely perceptible glimmer upon the inky surface that melted into 
the midnight void within a biscuit’s throw from the vessel’s side. 
There were a few passengers, who vanished with the daylight, and 
might be seen, by peering through the cloudy skylight glass, 
seated at the cabin-table, the lamplight bright upon them, 
and making the picture ot the irradiated interior, by contrast 
with the breathless blackness on deck, like a made-lantern show. 
There was no gleam of phosphorus, no pallid streak ot foam, to de- 
fine the presence ot the deep; but the soft seething of the passing 
froth, resembling the escape of steam heard thinly and at a long 
distance, filled the ear with a permanent note, and the dull vibration 
ot the engines could be lightly felt. The haze was as whetting as 
the rain; and the buirs-e3^es over the lighted interior glimmered 
like emeralds in the decks upon which the mist was crawding as the 
vessel carried it along. There is a mystery in the hushed black- 
ness ot a night like this at sea which may be enjo5^ed in the open 
ocean, where the imagination lets itself loose upon the hidden 
leagues ot waters, and finds a kind ot life in death in the mere 
capacity ot sentience amid such a universe of shadow; but it comes 
with an element of fear in a narrow sea studded with quicksands 
and alive with vessels. The eye struggles with the darkness in vain. 
Every instinct sympathizes wdth the blindness that has fallen upon 
3’^ou; but the strained ear catches no more than the sob and fret ot 
passing W’^ater and the chafing of gear as the vessel sways upon the 
indistinguishable folds of the swell. A man coming up out of the 
cabin of that steamer might have reckoned the vessel deserted and 
left to her own guidance. The wheel was amidships, and there was 
no familiar binnacle-lamp to relieve with its soft mist of light the 
eye that strove to pierce the darkness aft. To know' where the cap- 
tain w^as, or wiiether there were any hands on the lookout, it would 
have been necessary to sing out, or go about the decks and upon the 
bridge groping. 

Presently, what looked to be a coraposant— a small trembling point 
of light— hovered in the blackness on the starboard bow, and a 
moment after there crept out under it a dull green smudge, as faint 
and baffling in the thickness as the wavering flame of spirits of wine. 
A steamer’s lights; but all that was visible of her was a deeper dark- 
ness in tl’.e air where she loomed, a row ot illuminated scuttles like 
th*e beach -lamps of a little town seen afar, and fibeisof radiance 
striking into the foggy air from the bright light on the foremast. A 
deeper fold of darkness seemed to overlap the night as the invisible 
steamship swept by; the pulsing of her engines thinned down, and 
the w'ash of the bow-wave melted into the vague, haunting under- 
tone ot chafing water— a sound coming you know not from where. 
On a sudden the decks rang with a loud and fearful cry — “ There’s 
a vessel right ahead! Hard aport! Hard aport! mind, or we shall 
be into her!’ Crash! You could hear the sound of splintering 
wood, followed by a whole chorus ot shrieks, wdiile a dozen orders 
were volleyed out in horase note's on the steamer’s decks. “ What 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


45 

is i1 ?’ “ Where is she?’ “ Get some lights along, in God’s name!’ 

A bright red flame threw out a wild radiance over the steamer’s side; 
there was a rush ot men to see what it was, and there, gliding past 
the steamer, every outline distorted by the crimson, flickeriner, 
streaming fires ot a flare-tin held on high by one of her men, was''a 
French three-masted smack, her decks apparently full of people, 
shrieking all together, and in every conceivable posture of en- 
treaty and terror— a dreadful picture indeed, standing out with 
terrible distinctness in the red light of the flare against the 
liquid pitch ot the sea and the sky. Their shouts and cries were 
in the rudest patois; it was impossible to distinguish their meaning 
amid the hubbub on the maimed and broken hull, as it veered swiftly 
astern, the main-mast over the side, the wild light flashing up the 
crowd of white faces as the flame from the tin broke out in a blood- 
red fork ot radiance, and the whole fearful picture vanishing as the 
light suddenly expired, and the night rolled its inky tide over it. 
The steamer’s engines were instantly reversed, and the iron fabric 
stopped. The passengers came rushing up out of the cabin, in- 
creasing the distraction of the darkness by their eager, terrified in- 
quiries to know what had happened. The chorus of shrieks astern 
was silenced, and only faint, single, most melancholy shouts broke 
forth the terrible silence upon the sea, proving but too conclusively 
that the vessel had foundered, and that these cries came from 
swimmers. 

Meanwhile every lamp and lantern aboard the steamer that could 
be collected had been brought on deck, and you could see the dark . 
figures of seamen struggling to get the boats overboard, rushing aft, 
and vociferating promises of speedy help into the blackness astern, 
some bending on lanterns to ropes’-ends, and letting them drop over 
the side, and flinging ends of line overboard for the clutch of such 
swimmers as should reach the steamer; while the cries of the captain 
and mates and the shouts of the crew were made deafening by the 
pouring and hissing of steam up in the blackness overhead. It 
always seems an eternity at times like this. before the boats are over- 
board; something gets foul; the oars have been taken forward to be 
scraped, and cannot be found ; a kink in the fall has jammed in the 
davit-block; there is no plug, and a dozen voices are shouting all at 
once for something to take its place. But two boats at last were 
launched, after an interval ot about five minutes, and pulled slowly 
away for the spot where the smack had foundered, a hand in each 
bow holding a lantern and keeping a bright lookout for those black 
spots which should denote the heads of swimmers and drowning 
men. A silence as of death fell upon the steamship as her boats left 
her. A crowd of people stood in the stern, watching the two spots 
o^ light upon the water, breathlessly listening for any sound that 
should indicate the rescue of even one man. The lanterns over the 
side flung a short space of radiance upon the sea, and men were 
posted along the rail to watch for any approaching swimmer who 
should have been missed by Die boats. 

“ Are you finding any of them?” bawled the captain of the 
steamer, sending his voice in a roar through the hollow of his hands. 

” Ay, ay, we’re picking them up,” came back the answer in the 
merest thread of sound. 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


46 

Ten minutes went by, and then suddenly there arose a shout from 
one of the men stationed at the port bulwarks. 

“Here’s a man swimming here!” and in a breath there was a 
rush to the side. 

“ Get another light over!”- 

“ Fling him this lii'e-buoy!” 

“ Pitch a coil ot rope to him, but mind you don’t hit his head or 
you’ll sink him!” 

Half a dozen splashes told that these various orders had been exe- 
cuted. “ He’s got hold ot my line!” sang out a voice, and as the 
rope was gently hauled in, a seaman, jumping into the bight of a 
rope, sprang overboard, and in a few moments both were dragged 
over the side. 

The halt-drowned French smacksman fell down in a heap the in- 
stant he touched the deck. He was dressed in heavy sea boots and 
oil-skin leggings, and how he had managed to swim the distance from 
where his vessel had foundered to the steamer was a miracle not to 
be explained by any known law ot specific gravity. He was carried 
into the forecastle, unable to articulate; but another quarter of au 
hour went by before the boats returnect. 

“ How many have you” shouted the captain, as they approached. 

“ AVe have four, and the other boat has five. There are women 
among ’em,” was the answer. 

They came alongside, and one by one the poor creatures were 
handed up. There were three women, dressed in the picturesque 
costume ot the Boulogne fish-w^ite; but draggled, streaming, with 
closed eyes, and a quick, suffocating breathing, half dead. Most of 
the others were in the last stage ot exhaustion; but one was able to 
speak, and as he stood a monient in the lantern-light answering the 
captain’s questions, a more moving object could not be imagined. 
The water drained from his fingers, his hat was gone, and his iron- 
gray hair— for he was an old man— lay in a tangled mass over his 
eyes; and there was a most heart-rending expression of horror and 
•despair in his face. 

He said his vessel had left Boulogne early that morning. There 
were tour women and ten men and boys on board. He owned that 
they had had no lights burning. He trembled like a freezing man, 
and was then led below, with his hands to his face, sobbing as if his 
heart would break, and moaning in his rude French that among the 
drowned were his wife and boy. 

“ Are you sure there were no others afloat when you came away?” 
asked the captain of the mate, who had charge of the boats. “ One 
man swam to us, 1 must tell you, and we have him aboard.” 

“ Sure, sir,” was the answer. “ AVe pulled yound and round, but 
there was nothing to be seen. The people were feaved by the main- 
mast, that was left afloat when the smack went down. Those who 
were drowned missed it, otherwise it was big enough to keep all of 
them up.” , V 

For another twenty niihitles the captain lingered, peering into 
the darkness, and kee]>ih^?-'one boat overboard ready for the first 
sound. But the deep^^as as silent as the tomb, and nothing dis- 
turbed the death-like Atillness unless it were the murmur of the men 
forward talking overThe tragical incident, and the quick, passionate 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


47 

whispers of the passengers, as one would suddenly say, “ Hush! 
what was that?” and another, ” See! is not that something moving 
out yonder?” Nothing more could be done. Very reluctantly the 
captain quilted the stern of his vessel and gave orders to get the boat 
on board, and in a little while the steamer was slowy moving again, 
through the blackness, her decks A^rapped in darkness and silence, 
While the haze floated like steam round the mast-head light, and the 
water gurgled like the cry of a drowning man as it eddied round un^ 
der the counter and went away in a pale glimmer of froth into the 
midnight gloom astern. 

This little incident wdll, I believe, fairly set before the reader One 
of the perils against which those particular captains to whom 1 re- 
ferred in the beginning of this article have to contend. Here is a 
fishing- smack, lying becalmed, without a light showing, on a night 
made pitch-dark by a drizzling haze. How could such a collision be 
averted, short of the captain of the steamer bringing up? a remedy 
which his owners most assuredly would not think the better of him 
for adopting. I repeat that having regard to the diflicult navigation 
of the mouth of the Thames, as far south as the southern limb of 
the Goodwins, to the mass of shipping of all kinds that is always 
crowding these waters, to the perilous weather to be found there, 
and to the negligence, foolhardiness, and indiflerence which are 
characteristics of the seamanship of scores of the men— English as 
well as foreigners— who have charge of small craft navigating that 
sea, the manner in which the masters I am speaking of carry their 
steamers from port to port, year after year, showing alwmys the 
same clean bill of health, implies an amount of skill and vigilance 
which any one acquainted with the navigation and dangers of the 
English Channel from the Nore to the Bullock Bank will own can- 
not be too highly praised. 


LOSS OF A SMACK’S CLEW. 

1 PELL once into conversation with a smack-boy— a Yorkshire lad 
— who told me a story which I privately declined to believe until 1 
saw the printed report of the inquest, and had confirmation of hia 
narrative from other hands. Men who go to sea meet with strange 
accidents, and perish through causes which landsmen would ridicule 
as impossibilities in marine novels; but seldom do a vessel’s crew 
encounter such a disaster as that which befell the people of the 
smack Apostle, of Hull. 1 wish I could tell the story as the fishing 
apprentice gave it me. No painter could imagine a finer study than 
the figure of the lad in his blue knitted overall, his big boots, his 
sou’-wester, the hinder thatch of which forked out from the back 
of his head like the tail of a gull on the wing, his jmung face, as he 
talked, warming up into a kind of passionate awe and fear, as it 
might in his sleep when the dreadful circumstance stood out in the 
sharp configuration of a dream; while nowand again he would pass 
the back of his rough hand across his forehead to rub off the gouts 
of sweat which gathered there. However, 1 can do no more than 
translate the lad’s yarn, and make it complete, in its way, by tacts 1 


48 


JiOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


ffot from others. The Apostle, then, was a smack, belonging!; to 
Hull. Will Stevenson was her master, and John Butler her mate. 
Besides these she carried two other men and a boy— the lad who 
told me the story — making in all five souls. She left Hull, how> 
ever, with only tour men, for the -boy did not join her until she had 
been out cruising a week, when he was sent to her in a steamer, 

Lite on board a smack is but a dull affair, and such excitements 
as it has are all against the fisherman. It is tedious work drifting 
for hours with the trawl overboard; but what is to be made of it 
when, as sometimes happens, the trawl is got aboard and the net- 
found torn to pieces by a piece of sunken wreck or something of 
that kind, and all the fish gone? Or take a gale ot wind blowing 
for a week, keeping the fisherman -waiting and waiting tor a spell 
of moderate weather to fetch his ground. To be hove-to in a smack 
in the Hnrth Sea is such a dance as you must endure— not for a 
day, but tor several days together— to understand. Who that has 
rolled in a big steamer across the tempestuous stretch ot waters- 
which wash our eastern coasts has not w’^alched from the reeling, 
spray-swept deck the spectacle ot some dandy or cutter-rigged boat, 
jumping as if by magic into the arena of the green, pelting, and 
foaming amphitheater, with her storm jib-sheet to windward or 
well amidships, a slender band of dark, close-reefed main-sail tear- 
ing at the quivering gaff, wdiile she tosses the high spring of her 
bows at the rushing snow ot the surges, chopping sharply down 
into the livid vortex and making it flash up in white spume that 
smothers her like the smoking spray of a great water-tall, vanishing 
until her gaff isi hidden, and nothing shows but the jerking vane at 
the mast-head behind the glittering ridge of the sea that runs at her 
with the roar ot a goods train sweeping through a tunnel; and then 
springing afresh to the height of the thunderous surge until some 
fathoms of her keel forward are exposed, and leaning down upon 
the slope of the mountainous wave, and under the giant pressure of 
the ringing gale, until her mast seems parallel wdth the water, and 
-her dark shred of canvas a mere black patch upon the snow-storm 
under her? 

One wonders, looking at such a sight, how the big-tooted fellows 
aboard of her hold on; how they manage to cook their food; by 
-what inconceivable art they contrive to “fetch” their bunks, or 
sleeping-closets, without numerous ineffectual struggles, first ot all, 
to hit the holes. But, in truth, no class of sailors make less trouble 
of dirty weather than fishermen. With his tiller securely lashed, 
the storm-jib slatting^ a moment or two as the reefed main-sail 
swings the little craft into the wind, then shoving her nose round 
again as the sea runs hissing away under her, the air forward dark 
with flying foam and the water draining overboard in bucketfuls 
with every send, the smacksman sits cozily in the companion, pipe 
in mouth, keeping one eye on the lookout and the other eye on the 
time when one of his mates shall come and take his place, and send 
him below to toast his hands at the little stove, whose ruddy glow 
pleasantly tinges the darksome twilight of the cabin, and enables 
him to find, without groping, another pipe of tobacco before he lies 
down. 

Daybreak on Friday, the Ap>ostJ0 being then very nearly five weelis 


KOUKD THE -GALLEY EIRE, 


4i> 

out from Hull, found the smack with her trawl over the weather- 
quarter and near the north-east end of the Dog<;er Bank. There 
was a fresh breeze blowing and a middling sea running, and the 
smack, surging to leeward with the tread of the waves, rose and 
fell with the regularity ot a pendulum. Many miles distant to wiud- 
w’ard was another smack, apparently heading for the same ground 
over which the Apodle was dragging her trawl; otherwise the sea 
was vacant, and the greenish dawn, flinging a sickly tint into tln^ 
sky, but leaving the water dark by contrast, and throwing up th(^ 
great circle of the horizon until the ocean resembled a black and 
solid disk centering the huge concavity of the heavens, made the im- 
mediate aspect of the deep indescribably wild and n:elanchot 5 ^ In- 
deed, there is not a more desolate scene in the world than daybreak 
at sea. The shadow ot the night still hangs in folds upon the 
water, and the dim illumination in the east only serves to accentu- 
ate the chilly sullenness and grim bleakness bequeathed by the black 
hours, the last of which is drawing away in gloom into the west. 
But the sun is a noble magician, and one stroke of his flashing wand 
converts the mystery of the dawn’s vague hints into a glorious reve- 
lation of blue heights and sparkling waters. 'Y\\e Apostle’ s trawl had 
been over all night, but a further short spell of drifting could do 
no harm, and might furnish out another trunk of fish, and the in- 
terval would give them time to get breakfast. So the little fire in 
the stove was stirred into a good blaze, the coffee boiled, and the 
two men at rest in their bunks routed out for the meal. 

Fishermen are usually well fed, and that is one reason, 1 suppose, 
why they appear to relish their food in a manner you shall not find 
in any forecastle. They have generally a good freight -of fish to 
pick from, and they are not slow to boil a cod or cook a big sole 
when fancy and appetite prompt them. Somehow or other, to me, 
the smoke that comes blowing away out of the little chimneys which 
pierce their decks always savors of good cheer, and 1 was not at all 
surprised, on looking over some victualling accounts shown me by 
a smack- owner, to discover that the fishermen’s sea-larders — many 
of them, certainly — are stocked with a liberality that must make 
owners very anxious indeed to know how much fish there is aboard, 
when their vessel’s number or burgee comes within reach ot their 
telescopes. 

Breakfast done, the master gave orders for the trawl to be got in, 
and all hands tumbled up on deck to help at one of the few heavy 
jobs which happen aboard fishing-smacks. 1 have already said 
there w'as a fresh breeze blowing, and the vessel, though hove-to 
v»rith her jib-sheet to windward, leaning down freely under the 
weight of the reefed main sail. The sea was regular, but ran 
quickly, and every lift of the'surges helped the wind to lay the 
Jittle craft along, until at times her lee gunwale was flush with the 
water; but, like all boats of her class, she would right with great 
vehemence, jumping to windward like a goaded creature of instinct, 
and making the decks, slippery with Avet, extremely dangerous even 
to practiced feet. They say that a fisherman’s walk is two steps 
and overboard, and any one would have thought the saying a true 
one who had seen this jumping bit ot a fabric— sparking like a 
shrimp in and out of the hollows of the tumbling waters— and 


50 


ROUls'D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


■watched thos<i big-booted, clumsily-moving, poworfully-built men 
striding about the decks and making ready to drag the great trawl in, 
-The process is very simple. The dandy wink is manned, the 
beam secured, and the net is then dragged in over the side. The 
A'postle's men had succeeded in getting in the net to the cod-end, as 
it is called. All five hands were emplo5"ed on this job, as it is one 
that demands the united strength of such little companies as smacks 
carry. They leaned over the rail to grasp the net, but the vessel at 
that moment burying her lee side through the lift of an unusually 
heavy sea, one of the men lost his balance and went overboard, and 
the net bellying out and sending away as the vessel rolled to wind- 
ward, in the twinkling .of an eye the other three men, whose hands 
grasped the meshes, w^ere torn clear over the beam and buried in the 
sea along-side, leaving only the boy on deck. It was done in a 
breath. There was no time even to raise a shriek. 

One moment there were all four men leaning over the side, the 
net securely inwreathed about their fingers and waiting for the sig- 
nal from tile master to drag together; the next they were flounder- 
ing in the water along-side, struggling, desperately clutching at the 
sinking net, and drowning. There was a portion of the net on 
deck, and to this the boy — who preserved an heroical presence of 
mind in the midst of this appallingly sudden and dreadful disaster 
— clung, that the men might not drag it all overboard (and so have 
nothing to hold by) in their wild and overhand grasping at the 
deadly, deceptive meshes which floated and sunk under them, and 
clogged the free action of their limbs, and clung to them like masses 
of sea-weed, settling them lower and lower as liew folds of it were 
swept by the water around them. 

The net being to leeward, the tendency of every sea was to belly 
it out and increase its weight, while also setting the w'hole mass of 
il further and further away from the vessels’s side; but this w^eight 
was beyond description increased by the men, who battled with the 
fury of strong, dying creatures in the deadly envelopment of the 
trawl. Every now and again a sea would break under the vessel 
and bury the poor fellows in foam; and then, as the smack swept 
down into the hollow and leaned heavily to windward, the drag of 
the hull upon the net would strike it up again, and the four smacks- 
men would re-appear with dusky, despairing faces, their eyes pro- 
truding as they strained for breath. Robust as the boy was, here 
was a conflict it was impossible for him long to engage in. He held 
to the net with as manly and resolute a heart as ever an English lad 
brought to a struggle for life; but the weight of the bellying net, 
and of the men clinging to it, increased as it was tenfold at times by 
the swing and rush oflhe'smack upon the sea, must have taxed and 
presently exhausted the strength of a dozen such as he; gradually 
as he failed the net was torn foot by foot away from him, though 
every time it was wrenched from his hand he grabbed at it again, 
and held on with clinched teeth until another swoop would unlock 
his fingers as you might snap a clay pipe-stem. 

Suddenly turning his head— for hitherto he had been engrossed by 
the dreadful struggle in the water just a fathom or two away be- 
yond him— he spied the smack that had been sighted at dawn, 
about half a mile to windward. She was manifestly heading for 


IIOU.ND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


51 

the Apostle, and the boy shouted to the miserable drowning men 
that help was coming, and urged them to hold on. But it was 
doubtful whether they heard the lad's voice. Close upon the water 
the seething and hissing of foam would be deafening; moreover, 
their eyes were glazing— death had his hands on their throats; they 
presented a row of asphyxiated faces, now and again revolving in 
the eddies amid the trawling- gear, sometimes thrown up until their 
bodies as high as the waists were out of the water, in which post- 
ure they would remain poised with uplifted arms that gave them a 
horrible appearance of entreaty, then vanishing utterly, to emerge a 
few seconds after as the roll of the vessel swung them up and out. 
The boy’s strength was now completely exhausted, and also he had 
to let go, in order to signal to the approaching smack. The whole 
of the net then went overboard. 

About an hour had passed since the men had fallen into the sea, 
during all which time this most shocking tragedy was being enacted, 
while the boy wiih magnificent courage protracted his shipmates^ 
lives by maintaining his hold of the net. But the moment he let go 
the net veered out to its full sweep, and an instant after one of the 
men sunk and rose no more. The smack was now within hail. 
The boy rushed to the weather side, and shouted out the dreadful 
story with such strength as remained in him, at the same time point- 
ing frantically at the water where the drowning men were. The 
dreadful scene ’was by this time visible to the crew of the vessel, 
that proved to be a Yarmouth smack called the Esther. They 
tumbled their boat over the side; a couple of hands jumped into 
her and rowed at once for the perishing fishermen. The boy ran 
back to the lee side of his vessel to encourage the poor ceat ares, 
but, looking, he discovered that the third man was gone; the master 
and mate only were to be seen, both clinging to the gear and scarcely 
living. The'little boat — hardly belter than a walnut-shell in such 
a sea— came along fast ; but before she could come up to the mas- 
ter, he let go his hold and floated away, face down and arms hang- 
ing lifeless upon a running wave. A few strokes of the oars, how- 
ever, brought the rescuers abreast of him, and he was seized and 
lifted into the boat, which then returned and took off the mate from 
the gear, to which he clung like a mass of black sea-weed torn 
from the rocks. Calling out to the boy that they would see to him 
presently, the Yarmouth fishermen rowed back to the Esther with 
their dreadful freight, but when they came to hand the men up 
over the side they found that the master was dead. The mate was 
carried below, stripped and dried before the cabin stove, then wrap- 
ped in rugs and laid in a bunk. But he was little more than a 
corpse when rescued, and the skipper of the Esther, going presently 
to see how the poor fellow fared, found that he had expired. This 
was the last of the four seamen who a couple of hours before were 
full of life and hope and heartiness. Meanwhile the master of the 
Estlm' had sent three of his men aboard the Apostle, and two days 
after the disaster both vessels arrived at Yarmouth. 

1 know not how this simple little narrative may affect others, 
but the relation of it moved me deeply. That four English sailors 
should meet with death so unexpected, so full of anguish in its pro- 
traction, so bitterly cruel throughout a long, long hour’s suffering,. 


52 


KOUXI) TKE GALLEY FIIIE. 


is perhaps significant only as another illustration of the perils of the 
deep. It is just one of the brief and simple annals of the poor 
sailor. But 1 cannot but think that the behavior of that young ap- 
prentice — named Frederick John Graham— makes it worthy of 
record. Those who have any acquaintance with English fishermen 
are only too painfully well aware that the relations between owners 
and apprentices are by no means of a cordial kind, and in several 
places I hear of the. clergy and others taking up the cause of these 
boys, and asking the public for funds to help to give them homes 
and to educate them into some knowledge /)f religion and morality, 
and out of the deplorable ignorance in which they are suffered to 
live. 1 am well aware that some apprentices are decidedly trials to 
smack-owners. They will run away with their master’s clothes. 
They will refuse to go to sea in the hope of being taken before a 
magistrate and sent to prison instead. But, nevertheless, I cannot 
quite satisfy myself that smack-owners— taking them as a body, 
granting many exceptions — treat their apprentices with the consid- 
eration that even the most hard-worked and ill-paid servants in other 
walks of life expect and exact from their masters. One does not 
want them to act the part of school-masters, and teach the boys to 
read and write; but upon what principle do they oppose the efforts 
of others who are willing to perform that duty? and why do they 
find something obnoxious in homes established to furnish smack 
apprentices with certain comforts and harmless recreations — calcu- 
lated to keep the lads out of the streets when they come ashore from 
a voyage — which smack-owners themselves do no apparently see 
any reason for providing? 

For these and other reasons, therefore, the endurance and hearty 
English spirit of Graham may be thought a proper subject to hold 
up to applause; for, accepting the lad as a type, the public may 
witness enough merit in the hardly used and laboriously worked 
community to which he belongs to justify them in giving a helping 
hand to the humanitarians who are struggling to make the lives of 
the apprentices when ashore happy and useful to themselves. While 
the smack-owner will recognize in this narrative of Graham a spirit 
to which he is by no means unaccustomed, though he needs per- 
haps to have it more diligently emphasized than he has yet found 
if, before he will accept the hint it offers to his forbearance and to 
his humanity as the owner — in a fiiost literal sense — of lads who, 
taking them all round, are the most friendless beings in the world, 
with the whole machinery of the law against them, and only here 
and there a few sea-side dwellers to take their part by endeavoring to 
give some little wholesome sweetness to their existence when out of 
their vessels. 


FIRE AT 8EA. 

An impressive story of the deatruc?ion by fire of a full -rigged 
American ship in the North Atlantic has been told me. Certain 
features of it combine to make it an incident certainly worthy 
a longer record than is usually devoted to maritime disasters, and 
altogether it yields such an idea of the horror of fire at sea as is 
not often to be got from stories of misfortune of that kind. 


ROUND TjrE GALLEY FIRE, 


53 


A certain TV'<^dnesday in August found the 7?. B. Fuller a little 
over three weeks out on her voyaa:e from Cardiff to Valparaiso. 
She was freighted with coal, and carried a crew of twenty hands, 
being indeed a ship of 1360 tons register. A vessel of that size, 
unless maimed by short fore and mizzen-top-gallant masts, is sure 
to make a handsome picture on the water under full sail. The 
Americans rarely mutilate their ships, but, on the contrary, with 
sky-scrapers and moon-sails, pile their canvas to the heavens, and, 
mixing plenty of cotton with their sail-cloth, carry a yacht-like 
whiteness aloft that will shine upon the horizon like a peak of ice 
brilliant with snow. 

The weather had been fine all day, with a beam wind, and the 
deep, long, black-hulled ship, leaning under the weight of her 
cloths, slipped softly along her course over the trembling and flash- 
ing blue. What witchery is there comparable to such sailing? No 
sense of delight that is born of freedom and movement surpasses 
the joyousnees kindled in the spirits by the swift, smooth rushing 
of a lofty sailing-ship over the swelling bosom of a great ocean, all 
sky above, all sea below, and between, the music of the clear, glad 
breeze. 

The sun sank and the night gathered, the wind fined down, and 
the American ship, with spars erect, floated over the dark waters, 
in which the starlight seemed to flake away in small coils of quick- 
silver. Over the side nothing could be heard but the tinkling of 
the ripples at the stem; aloft there was not a stir, unless it were 
now and again the muffled chafing of the foot of a sail upon a stay 
or the rattle of a reef-point upon the canvas. Forward all was in 
shadow, with the figure of a man on the lookout; while aft the 
mate on duty paced the deck, pausing sometimes to take a peep at 
the cornpass-card, where the binnacle-lamp glistened in the brass 
center-bit of the wheel, and shone upon the face of the ofiicer as he 
stooped to observe the indication of the card. 

The ceiptain, Mr. Thomas Peabody, had left the deck about three- 
quarters of an hour. He was asleep in his cabin when, shortly after 
ten o’clock, he was awakened by a feeling of suffocation, and per- 
ceived that the cabin was full of smoke. Moreover, the atmosphere 
was charged with a deadly, nauseating, gaseous smell, that gave an 
iron tightness to his throat and filled his body with an unendura- 
ble prickly sensation, as though strong mustard had been rubbed 
into his skin. He rushed on deck, wdiere the fresh air at once re- 
vived him, and not immediately perceiving anybody about, shouted 
for the officer of the watch. Tlie chief mate came running out of 
the darkness forward, and before Captain Peabody could address 
him, cried out that the ship was on fire. The news spread as if by 
magic, and in a few moments the decks were alive with the crew 
hurrying out of the forecastle. 

Of all cries, none thrills through the heart of a sailor like that of 
fire. Human helplessness is never so felt as at such a time. The 
ship is a burning volcano, from whose cabin the red flames may 
soar presently, making a wide cipeumference of air scorching hot 
with a furious play of withering flame. The mate said that he be- 
lieved the fire was in the hold under the cabin. Forthwith there 
was a rush to the hatches, which were immediately closed ; calk- 


54 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


ing-irons were fetched, aad the air was busy with the hammering 
of mallets. It was a sight to see the men. There was no lack of 
determined courage among them, but the cry of “ Fire!” was ring- 
ing in their ears; they toiled in quick, impulsive rushes, with 
feverish haste, glancing to right and left, knowing not in what part 
of the ship the fire would first show itself in flame. Every ventila- 
tor was closed and the cabin shut up, in the hope of stifling the fire, 
and the crew then gathered in a group in the waist to watch and 
wait and see what their work would do for them. 

Presently somebody called out that the smoke was still breaking 
through, 

“ Look there — and there, sir!” 

It w’as hard to guess how it could escape; the hatches were closed 
and calked, every aperture securely blocked, and yet there was the 
smoke breaking out from all parts of the vessel as steam rises from 
the compact earth. On this the carpenter’s chest was overhauled, 
and by ord|j^fk)f the captain the men fell to work to bore holes in 
the deck. ATthe solid planks were pierced the smoke belched forth 
in puffs, mingled with a pestilential exhalation of gas that forced 
the seamen to work with averted faces. The pumps were then 
manned, the hose got along, buckets dropped over the side, and all 
hands turned- to to drown the fire by discharging water into the 
glowing cargo. Clouds of steam came up through the holes, 
regularly followed, as the white vapor thinned, by spiral columns 
of black smoke which wound round and round to the height of the 
main-top, where the light breeze caught and arched them over. 
No flames were as yet visible, but the men knew that the ship vras 
full of fire, that at any instant the hatches might be riven and 
shriveled up by a discharge of flame, and therefore when the captain 
gave orders to lower the boats there wds a rush to the davits. 

When the boats were in the water alongside, the captain, desiring 
to save certain articles, called the mate and four seamen to accom- 
pany him to the cabin; but they had not been there a minute when 
they suddenly ran out, some of them vomiting blood, and all of 
them complaining that their heads were swelled so that they were 
like to burst. Indeed, but for their speedy flight, they must have 
dropped dead in an atmosphere that was rendered virulently poison- 
ous by the combined gas and smoke. A short spell of rest and 
fresh air recovered the poor men, and the crew then proceeded to 
victual the boats with such provisions as they could come at. The 
main-yards were braced aback, and the men entered the boats and 
rowed* to a distance of about half a mile from the vessel, where they 
remained. 

It was a fine night, very calm, and the ship, with her main-yards 
aback, lay steady. Hour after hour went by, but no flame showed 
itself, though there was a gradual thickening of the smoke from the 
deck, and the seamen could observe it hanging in a shadow over 
the mast-heads of the vessel and to leeward of her. Gazing at her 
as she stood like a marble carving upon the dark sea, it was difficult 
for the men to realize that her hold was a concealed furnace; that 
by taking off one of the hatches and looking down they could have 
beheld an incandescent interior, a red-hot surface like a lake of fire 
with blue and green flames crawling over it, and masses of smoke, 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


55 


repelled or consumed by the intense heat of the central spaces. But 
tor the shadow overhanging her glimmering heights, there were no 
signs that anything was amiss with tlie ship. Surveyed from the 
low level of the boats, she looked a majestic fabric out there, a 
brave sight in the faint, fine starlight, it was a long, weaiy and 
bitter vigil for the poor fellows to keep. They would not leave the 
neighborhood of the vessel while she remained afloat. They could 
not tell what might happen. If she burst into flames the light she 
marie might bring them help; or the fire might die out and so give 
them their home to return to. While she was there she was, in a 
manner, something to hold on to: for it was a fearful thing to look 
away from her into the mystery of the darkness around, and to think 
of being left to struggle amid that black and fathomless desert of 
water in open boats, which brought the mighty deep within reach 
of their hands. 

Dlowly the long hours went by and then the dawap^e, and the 
sun uprose. With the first of the gray light every ^(fcwas turned 
upon the ship. They could see the shroud of smoke that overhung 
her, yet not a spark of fire had been visible throughout the night, 
and this, now that the sunshine was on the sea, begot a hope in 
the men that, though to be sure the smoke crawled thickly from the 
ship, the fire was not so bad as they had feared, and that a long and 
resolute struggle might enable them to conquer it. Accordingly, 
the odrs were thrown over, and the boats headed for the vessel. 
The boat occupied by the captain was the first to get along-side. 
He jumped on board and was followed by others; but the heat of 
the decks striking through his boots made him put his hand to the 
planks. It was like touching hot iron. He walked to the cabin, 
but on feeling the door he withdrew his fingers with a groan. The 
whole fabric was full of fiery heart; whatever touched the flesh 
gave it pain; the very ropes which lay coiled over the belaying-pins 
were too hot to handle; the pitch was bubbling in the seams; the 
air between the bulwarks resembled the atmosphere of a furnace; 
in the haze of the heat every object seemed to revolve like a cork- 
screw; ‘and the men in the boats said that feeling her side, even to 
the level of the water-line, was as bad as putting the hand upon a 
boiler full of steam. 

A cry from one of the seamen who had come over the side in bare 
feet, raised a kind of panic among those already aboard. “Over 
with you,” was the shout, “ before she bursts into a blaze!” and in 
mad haste the poor fellows dropped over the bulwarks, seized the 
oars, and resumed the same distance from the ship that they had 
occupied all night. 

Soon after this a small breeze of wind arose. It seemed to pene- 
trate the vessel, for with the draught there soared up a thick body 
of smoke. Her passage to leeward was perceptible in the short, oil- 
smooth wake to windward of her; but the drift of the boa-ts was the 
same as hers, so that the men had no need to nse their oars to main- 
tain their distance. There tvas now weight enough in the wind to 
blow the smoke clear of the decks before it rose a foot above the 
bulwarks, so that the picture of that full-rigged ship remained there 
in Us completeness. As the lime passed the men would see a fount- 
ain of sparks hove up occasionally in the smoke. It was dismal 


HOUND THE GALLEY I'JRE. 


5G 

work sitting and watching that fine ship smoldering. All that the 
men possessed was left aboard of her; they had come away, most 
of them, in their shirts and trousers, many without shoes, and there 
in those three boats they sat looking at the burning vessel, silent in 
the main, often glancing around them on the lookout for a sail, and 
liolding on to the thwarts or gunwales as the boats jerked and 
toppled sharply about on the bit of a sea that the wind had raised. 
A little before noon those who had their eyes on the ship perceived 
the mizzen-mast to sway to and fro a moment; then suddenly it fell 
with a crash; a rush of smoke, like a monstrous balloon, hovered 
over the quarter-deck and concealed the ruin; but it soared into the 
air, and sailed away on the wind under a sudden furious discharge 
of sparks, which resembled the explosion of a mass of rockets, and 
when the vapor had settled down it was seen that the mizzen-mast 
was over the side, the vessel a wreck aft, while forward the sails 
were dusky and red, as though iron-stained, with tbe blowing of 
the sooty coils and the fire of the glowing sparks. 

Until the night came down no further alteration took place in the 
appearance of the vessel. During all those long hours the men 
sat crouched in their boats, watching their burning ship and search- 
ing the sea for the help that did not come. The second night rolled 
down dark, with wind}’^ clouds drifting across the skies. Here and 
1 here the phosphorus shone in the curl of a breaking surge. The 
half-clad men shivered under the fresh night wind; but the ship 
while she stayed there was a beacon. If they quitted her, what 
was there to do? She was a dreadful signal upon the dark sea, 
and might yet bring succor, and so they stayed. But the darkness 
liad not gathered an hour when a tongue 'of red flame darted out of 
the deck abaft the main-mast. It threw out a great light, like tlie 
flash of a big gun, and the men could see one another’s face in it. 
It sank and seemed to expire, and then there rushed up a body of 
crimson sparks which clearly defined the dense and swelling volume 
of smoke that blotted out the heavens in the south-east; but speedily 
the flame swept aloft again like a serpent, wreathing itself around 
tlie main-mast; then forward and apparently out of the forediatch 
sprang up another pillar of fire, and presently there were tongues 
and lances of flame crawling and hissing all over the doomed vessel, 
gliding in serpentine convolutions along her bulwarks, over her 
stern, around her bows, limning the configuration of her hull with, 
burning pencils, filling whole leagues of the darkness with light. 

The stays, the shrouds, all the gear connected with the bowsprit 
and jib-booms caught fire; the j^ards were kindled; the whole 
outline of the vessel was scored in fire upon the night; every detail 
of (he standing masts and yards and sails, the cross-trees, outriggers 
and tops— all the furniture of the ship’s decks, the boat-davits, the 
catheads, the martingale, the spritsail-yard, were expressed in flame. 
It was like the picture of a ship drawn in fire upon a black curtain. 
Not a sound came from the men in the boats. They watched 
breathless, full of amazement, thoughts of their serious position 
being overwhelmed by the dreadful but magnificent sight of that 
noble ship. When suddenly the burning vessel opened, a flame 
such as might go up from Vesuvius soared into the air, making a 
roaring noise upon the wdud; there w as a sound of the falling of the 


HOUS'D TIIK GALLEY FIPwE. 


■burning masts anti yards— and then, in a breath, the whole terrific 
picture vanished; it disappeared as you might blow out a candle; 
the boom of an explosion came dully up against the wind, and 
there was nothing but the stars, and the black sea, and a derse 
shadow in the south-east where the smoke from the foundered ship 
jvas heavily sailing away. 

If ever loneliness was felt at sea it was felt by those men when 
that great light went out, and left them in darkness and dread and 
uncertainty. But enough if I say that, after tossing about for two 
days and nights, they sighted a sail to the westward; which they 
chased until they were sufficiently near for her people to see them. 
She proved to be the London bark Paracca, whose captain gladly 
received the poor fellows and treated them with the utmost hu- 
manity. 


SEA-SICKNESS. 

Many will remember the terrible description of Mr. Aaron Bang’s 
panas of sea-sickness in “ Tom Cringle.” It is fortunate that 
everybody while suffering from nausea is not so demonstrative as 
the "West India planter. The horrors of a rough passage between 
Calais and Dover would be fearfully increased were the prostrate 
passengers to bewail amid their throes the wines and dishes which 
old NeptJine exacts from them. And yet one has only to consider 
wlmt kind of heaving sea it was that set the ’West Indian howling 
for brandy-and-water to commiserate the poor old epicure’s noisy 
anguish. Sailors will appreciate the effect upon a passenger’s 
stomach of a heavy gale of wind droi343ing as if by magic, and 
leaving the sailing-vessel— for Tom Cringle flourished before the 
days of steam— rolling upon a tremendous swell. A steamer whose 
screw or paddles are revolving and driving the hull through the 
water will not, amid the heaviest sea, give you the same sensation 
you get from a vessel tumbling about on a strong, fine weatlier 
swell, not a breath of air to steady her or give her way. The 
steamer in a measure escapes the worst of the seas by sliding out of 
them; her bows are lifted clear of tlie washing coil, while her lee 
sponsons are buried, and she half jumps the intervening hollow 
as her paddles thrust her from the summit of the surge. Often 
have I watched this behavior in swift steamers, and seen them take 
a how or beam sea as a horse takes a hurdle. 

But the motion of a vessel becalmed amid a heavy swell is one of 
the most uncomfortable of all sea experiences. Let tlie merest relic 
of nausea linger in the human breast, and this movement shall make 
a full-blown anguish of it. I have heard ^f stewards, men who 
have made a dozen voyages around the world— whose stomachs were 
as immovable in a gale of wind as the ship’s figure-head- 1 have 
heard of such men, I say, in a heavy, breathless swell, tumbling 
down among their dishes too sick to stand, rolling about among the 
crockery, and echoing witii tlieir groans the spasmodic gurgling of 
the water as it sobbed in the scupper-holes or washed up full, green, 
and .sickening over the glass of the scuttles or the cabia windows. 

This sort of tumblification is fast becoming a thing of the past 


58 


BOUND THE HALLEY FIRE. 


anionic passengers, very few of whom nowadflys make tlieir voy- 
ages in sailing-ships, although it is by no means yet an extinct 
feature of the emigrant’s progress from the Old World to Australia 
and New Zealand. At such times as this the ship is as sea -sick as 
any of the yellow and haggard sufferers who moan in her cabins; 
sqiieaks and cries and the rumbling of a disordered internal organ- 
ization resound in her hold. Over she leans like a fainting creature, 
and the bubbling wash of water along-side delivers a note full of 
nauseating suggestion; the beating of the canvas against the masts 
sends a shiver through the hull; down drops her counier amid a 
swirl of gurgling eddies, the stern-post complains, the rudder jars, 
the wheel-chains harshly strain; and then, up, slowly and giddily, 
mounts the after end of the staggering fabric, making the pale and 
helpless holder-on there feel that his brains are descending into his 
boots, and that his bowels are rising to fill the emptiness of his 
skull, while sharp reports of crashing crockery break out through 
the skylights, the cask that has broken adrift on the main-deck 
rolls to and fro, and defies the pursuit of the three or four seamen 
who dodge about after it and go sprawling over one another into, 
the scuppers, the pigs under the long-boat scuBSe and snort, chests 
and boxes fetch away in the cabins, the sailors flounder over the 
cable range as they stagger out of the galley, with hook pots of tea 
in their hands, and the sea-blessings showered out by the cook, as 
he chases his dishes and pans and burns his fingers in his efforts to 
save the cuddy dinner, can be heard by the man at the wheel and 
the youngster who is shifting the dog-vane at the main-royai-mast- 
head. 

This, 1 say, was an o’ia experience; but it was a time to try the 
stomach while it lasted. Think of three or four days and three or 
tour nights of it! In these days, if you are sea-sick, you at least 
have the satisfaction of knowing tpat the ship is always going ahead, 
and That the day, if not the iiour, when your nausea will have 
terminated may be pretty accurately fixed. And yet, what man 
hanging over the side or prostrate on his back and execrating exist- 
ence can get satisfaction out of the thought that, bad as his sufier. 
ings are, they might be worse by being protracted? 1 believe there 
are some people who, when once their heads are fairly over the 
rail, or when what Thackery calls the “ expectaroon ” is between 
their knees, are inspired by such a loathing for life that they are 
not to be moved by the wildest threats of destruction. 

Once, in crossing from Calais to Dover, 1 noticed a vast pile of 
luggage, unsecured by a single lashing, heaped up on the fore-deck. 
All was well until we got clear of the French coast, when a small 
beam-sea set the vessel rolling. In a tew minutes the bulwarks, 
from the spoiisons to the eyes, were crowded with people of both 
sexes and various nationalities, all engaged in raising their voices 
in the most dismal manner, wiping their cheeks, and casting blood- 
shot glances around them, only to direct their gaze agai:Q with hide- 
ous rapidity upon the giddy white waves that rushed in a spinning 
dance att while they exploded in loud roars. 1 looked with alarm 
at the nodding pile o^ luggage^ feeling sure that an extra lurch 
would tumble the whole over and seriously injure the unhappy 
sick people on one side or other of the vessel. 


KOU^’D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


59 


I spolie to a French sailor — they were all Frenchmen aboard that 
steamer — and advised liim to secure the lu^i^affe. He merely shrnjrged 
his shoulders and made off. 1 addressed another, who could not 
or would not understand me. Thereupon 1 went up to the sea- 
sick people, and touching first one and then another, 1 pointed to 
the tower of luggage and advised them to go further aft, out of the 
way of the boxes, lest they should tumble upon them. They must 
have seen their danger as plainly as 1, but not one of them offered 
to m.ove. They kept a tight hold of the rail, merely turning their 
lack-luster eyes upon me with an expression in them half implor- 
ing, half savage, as much as to say, “ Let the boxes come! Let us 
be crushed! VYhat stops the boxes from falling?” Fortunately 
the second sailor I accosted perceived by this time that it the lug- 
gage was not secured the top boxes bade fair to go overboard when 
the stronger sea of mid- channel was reached; and so among them 
the Frenchmen 'bound the boxes to the deck, by ropes, a*nd by so 
doing, in my humble opinion, saved several valuable sea-sick lives. 

■ In this same journey 1 was amused by an aspect of .sea-sickness, 
or, let me say, a condition of it, that will be familiar to many who 
make short passages by water. Going forward of the funnel, where 
smoking is not prohibited, 1 took notice of a gentleman wearing an 
eye-glass. He was clad in a yaching-coat embellished with brass 
buttons, and he was smoking a large cigar. A very stout gentle- 
man was asking him some questions in broken English. T heard 
the gentleman with the eye-glass say that he belieiTed there was a 
pretty middling sea on outside; but ” if you’re afraid of being sick, 
mounseer, you should smoke, sir. You should do as I do. Nothing 
like tobacco for settling the stomach;” and he gave a horribl}" con- 
fident laugh. The corpulent Frenchman withdrew with a groan, 
and lodged himself in the gloom under the bridge near the engines, 
the vibration of which caused his immense body to quiver like a 
jelly on a supper-table when people ar^ dancing overhead, and there 
he lay so clamorously ill that the firemen dropped their shovels 
below to come up and look at him. 

Meanwhile 1 kept my eye on the gentleman who believed in 
tobacco, and when the steamer took the first of the seas 1 saw him 
seize hold of a shroud or a funnel-stay and set his legs wide apart. 
He continued puffing at his cigar for some time, but the intervals 
between removing and lifting it to his mouth grew longer and 
longer; presently it went out, but he took no notice. He had his 
glass in his eye, and his face looked forward; he was deplorably 
pate, and I never could have believed that such a trifling thing as 
a brass-button, and so prosaic an object as a nautically-cut coat 
could become, on occasion, more cuttingly ironical than any- 
thing a man’s friend could say of him. The eye-glass gave this 
gentleman an unusally glaring expressiop; he never shifted his 
gaze— 1 should say that he never winked. There he stood with his 
legs wide apart, the extinguished cigar in one hand and the other 
supporting him with a death-grip, staring with a horrible intensity 
at nothing. I knew perfectly well that if that nian were mads to 
shift his posture or speak he would rush to the rail. 

It was a brave fight; but it could not last. A young colored gen- 
tleman, thq ashiness of nausea visible in his dark shin, suddenly 


CO 


HOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


jumped up from under the pile of luggage, where he i'^d been 
screeniuii himself from the wind, and bolting to the side, expended 
himself in a howl full of the deep throaty noise that is pecuMar to 
neiiroes. It was irresistible; the man Avith the eye-glass let gv\ and 
staggered away, with his ci^ar gone and his hands extendevL 1 
feared that he would find no room, for the bulwark w^as lined ’ivith 
sufl’erers; but, with the selfishness of acute suffering, he plumped 
with all his might between a couple of Frenchmen, squeezed the 
aperture between them open with his elbows, and fixed himse'f 
there; and there he remained until the water grew smooth near th ' 
English cliffs, and the steamer went forward on a steady keel. 

It is difficult to understand why people should find anything di- 
verting in sea-sickness — than which surely nothing can cause more 
suffering. Of course, if a man will give himself airs ashore or on 
smooth water, use nautical words, and deride the misgivings others 
are honest enough to confess to, then, indeed, if we find that marine 
gentleman with his head in a basin, or with his face over the side, 
and his hat gone, we have some excuse to laugh at him. There are 
])eople who never will own that they are sick at sea, just as there 
are people who deny with indignaiion that they snore in their sleep, 
buch folks deserve our ridicule. For what is there to be ashamed 
of? 1 have known old sea-captains quit ships newly arrived from 
around the world and be ill on a voyage from London Bridge to 
Hull. If such men can shout for the steward without blushing, it 
is hard to know why Jones, of the Middle Temple, or bmith, of the 
btock Exchange, or Snooks, the celebrated novelist, should sneak 
to the side and feel humbled if his fellow-sufferers see him blue in 
the face with his pocket-handkerchief half-way down his throat. It 
may be that people laugli at sea-sick sufferers because of the enor- 
mously and by consequence absurdly leveling character of the 
malady. 

One might be the mostjcompassionateicreature living, and yet find 
it impossible to stop laughing at the debasement of the bigh-and- 
mighty personage who, when he came aboard, people whispered 
was the Right Honorable So-and-so, or the acute and the famous 
Mr. Justice Somebody-else. He sits aloof, he is full of dignity, he 
scarcely raises even a condescending eye from the book or paper in 
his hand to glance at the other passengers, who sit doggedly, if 
humbly, w^aiting for the wheels to go round, inside and outside. 1 
say that a man must be more than human if he can help laughing 
when the high-and-mighty personage changes color Avhen he puts 
his paper down and rolls his eyes ""about, when nothing seems to 
keep his head on but his shirt-collar, and wTien an invincible horror 
of life gleams in that gaze which has growm hollow with surprising 
rapidity. Alas! no amount of reputation, no social importance, 
no eloquence, which in other places might affect the heart and even 
improve the understanding, can save him. 

Yonder in the bows is a poor little cockney, a second-class pas- 
senger, in a shabby coat and his trousers half-way up his legs, sick 
beyond the power of description; there is no bench long enough on 
that vessel to furnish room for him and the great man at once ff the 
water were smooth ; but Nausea has waved her wand, and the humble 
little cockney and the high-and-mighty personage are brothers, and 


HOUS'D TllK GALLEY FIRE. 


61 


equals, tellow-sufferers. with all distiuctioDs vanished between them 
as, with yellow faces, the cockney forward, the great man aft, thev 
overhang t^'e rushing foam witli open mouths , *^1116 tears pouring 
from their eyes, and amruish inimitably expressed in the curve of 
their backs and the occasional kick-up delivered by their legs. 

More pathetic, perhaps, is the newly married couple, though 
many a cruel laugh and jeer have been directed even at them. But 
nothing is sacred at sea. Sentiment that is full of poetry in draw- 
ing-rooms, among flowers, under the moonshine, among hedges, 
takes another character among rough waters. 

1 remember once crossing fifty miles of sea in company with a 
young gentleman and his bride. They w^ere returning, 1 took it, 
from their honeymoon. They sat together upon a small, uncom- 
fortable bench fixed against the inside of the paddle-box, whence 
they commanded a fine view of the action of the engines, and where 
the smell of the oil-cans hung steadily in the wind. ‘ They both 
knew^ they w^ere going to be sick, and sat with hands locked, two de- 
voted hearts bent on suffering together. The steward — a pale, 
large, sandy-haired man — considerately anticipated their wants by 
placing a couple of basins at their feet. The dismal implements made 
tut a melancholy foreground tor the impassioned pair, and 1 wmn- 
dered how they would like to have had their photographs taken in 
that posture. A quarter of an hour sufficed to make the picture 
tragical. The wife leaned across the husband and the husband held 
on to her. His heroic devotion was immense. 1 could hear him in 
guttural accents pouring consolation into her deaf ears amid the 
intervals of his own convulsions, and when an unusuall)^ heavy roll 
to leeward caused both basins to slide aw^ay out of sight under the 
bench, I never beheld anything more touching than his struggles 
to replace them without letting go of his wife. 

Happily, however, the heart is occasionally steeled against such 
objects of misery as this by spectacles of selfishness and fear in the 
last degree contemptible. 1 particularly recall a gaunt Frenchman 
with a spiked mustache, who, long before nausea afflicted him, re- 
fused to stir from his seat to help his miserable, prostrate wife, and 
w’ho answered her murmurs to Emile to put something under her 
head and something over her feet, by fierce commands to her to 
jjold her tongue. This wretched man was himself seized with 
nausea, and so great was his fear — either excited by the somewhat 
heavy sea that w’^ashed along-side the vessel or by his sufferings, 
wiiich, to judge from the noise he made, must have led him to sup- 
pose that, bit by bit, the wiiole of him was going overboard — that 
after every explosion 1 could hear him shrieking, “ Maman! 
mamant” like a girl. 

What is the remedy for sea-sickness? 1 wish 1 knew ; most cheer- 
fully wmuld 1 impart the secret. There are many prescriptions, 
from the ice of Dr. Chapman to Jack’s lump of fat pork attached 
to a rope-yarn; but nothing seems to answ’er the end desired. Nor 
is it very remarkable that the wonderful vessels wdiich w^ere to put 
an end to nausea, should still leave the “ expect aroon,” even on 
tlieir owm decks, the useful piece of furniture passengers have for 
generations found it; for while clever gentlemen have shown us huw 
the eflfcct of the rolling and pitching movement of a ship upon the 


62 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE, 


head or stomach may be overcome by pivoted saloons, and swing- 
ing accommodations, they have entirely failed to produce any kind 
of mechanism to obviate the consequences ot those movements ot a 
vessel in a sea-way which are alone responsible for sickness; 1 mean 
the heave up and the swoop down. If the ship oscillated on an immut- 
able basis, a cot or a balanced chair would eflectually stop nausea; 
like a wine-glass on a swinging-tray, the passenger could always 
maintain a posture perpendicular with the horizon. But what is to 
qualify the sensations which follow the swoop down into the hol- 
low's and the roaring heave up on to the summits ot the seas? Every- 
thing in the ship must accompany her in her falls and in her risings; 
and it is this motion wdiicli sends people rushing to the side, which 
seta them roaring for the steward, wdiich causes them to loathe life, 
and to lie with their heads anywhere and their feet anyhow. 

] cannot help thinking, howmver, that imagination contributes 
something, and often a very great deal, to sea sickness; otherwise, 
how are we to account for people sutlering from nausea actually 
before they step on board the vessel that is to carry them? If a sea- 
sick man could be sent to sleep his sufferings would cease; yet the 
vessel goes on rolling, and it it is this movement, affecting the 
stomach, that causes nausea, 1 cannot quite see why the stomach 
should not be as sympathetic in sleep as in waking. Anyway, 1 be- 
lieve that a person could be made to forget to be sea-sick by having 
his imagination intensely occupied or his fears excited. Let a vessel 
full ot sea-sick people drive ashore, or catch fire, or be in collision; 
let the captain baW) out, “ We are all lost!” it would be interest- 
ing to conjecture how much sickness , would remain aboard that 
ship. A good prescription might be a profoundly exciting novel ; 
some hideous mystery so distractingly complicate as to make one 
sink all thoughts of waves and stewards in the eagerness to discover 
whether the figure Sir Jasper sees was really a ghost or his first wife, 
and whether it was her ladyship or the grooni she ran aw^ay with 
wrho shot Signor Squallini in the throat and did the fine arts a real 
service. But it is better to be sea-sick than in danger;. and, if the 
novelisits can do nothing for us, 1 am afraid there is no alternative 
but to go on feeing the stew^ards and building swift vessels. 


A LOG EXTRACT. 

The following entry was made in the official log-book of a ship 
named the O.rfard, ” Fifth November, 1882, Sunday, 4.0 p.m., lat. 
35® 39' S., long. 18® 53' E., W. Waters, A.B,, while furling the 
mizzen-top-sail fell from the yard into the sea, striking the half 
round of the poop in his fall. A life-buoy was promptly thrown 
him, the ship brought to the wind— it blowing a fresh gale from the 
S.W., with thick weather and a heavy sea at the time. The port 
life-boat was at once lowered, and proceeded under the charge of Mr. 
A. Bowling, second mate, to pick up the man. Owing, how'ever, 
to the shock sustained by him in striking the ship, ami his being 
oncumbered with oil-skins, etc., he sank before the boat could reacli 
him. After an unsuccessful search the boat returned to the ship 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


68 

»i](i \yas with difficulty hoisted up, owing to the heavy sea which 
half filled lier. Everything was done that could be done to save 
the poor fellow. (Signed) .J, Braddick, IVlaster.” 

Now, here is the whole story, as who would not suppose? The 
sailor dropped overboard, a boat unsuccessfullj' searched for him, 
and then the ship braced her main-yard round and sailed away. 
But extracts from log-books, I have taken notice, are like the little 
box which tffe fisherman in the “ Arabian Nights ” found upon the 
sea-shore; when it wtis opened a wonderful creature shaped itself out, 
and its figure filled the sky. 1 particularly realized this when Mr. 
Bowling gave me a sketch of the yarn of Which Captain Braddick’s 
log is the briefest hint. Why, what a world of adventure, of liero- 
ism, of peril, grows up out of these marine entries! It js four lines 
about a ship rescuing a crew from a sinking vessel; or about a cap- 
tain coming across a smack’s boat in the middle of the North Sea, 
with nothing in her but a little crouching, starving boy; or about a 
brig found drifting helplessly^ with her crew" dead of frost, lying 
upon her deck? Assuredly in those four lines there is the making 
of a thrilling volume to any man who shall faithfully put his hand 
to the work, and, exaggerating nothing, relate merely the adventure 
as it befell, and how it came about and ended, and what the actors 
in it said, and did, and thought. Here, in very brief form, is M^. 

, Bowling’s own yarn, told with my pen, of ah incident as common, 
pretty nearly in its way, at sea as*the sight of froth blowing into a 
hollow, or of the curve of the bow-wave flashing green and glass- 
smooth from the shearing cut-water: 

“ We left Calcutta on Sept. 4, 1882, with a full cargo, bound for 
the port of London. All went well — if by well you’ll understand 
nothing extraordinary outside spells of bothersome head winds, 
dead calms, and now and again a twister over the quarter to give 
us legs — until came Sunday, Nov. 5, on which date, you’ll see by 
the extract from the log-book where we were; the glass stood low, 
and in the morning there was a kind of wild, wet light in the suu 
when he sprang up from behind the dull-colored sea, and the lus- 
ter that came along with him seemed to roll on the top of the swell 
as if it was burning oil lying there instead of being up-and-down 
flashing of fair weather, when the light sounds the very bottom of 
the ocean with its silver lead-line, as you may see for yourselves if 
you’ll watch the break of day under a pure sky and over clean blue 
water. We were under top-gallant sails, on the starboard tack, the 
wind about west, with weight enough in it to swear by, and a slow 
gathering of haze all along the horizon over the port quarter — 
south-w^est the bearings would be about — and a thick, deep-breath- 
ing swell coming out of it, tumbled by the wind into a bit of a sea 
that washed with a stormy noise along the bends, and made the 
ship as uncomfortable as an old cab on a road full of stones. 

“ I had charge of the deck, and not liking the look of the weather, 

I went below to tell the captain about it. He had been up pretty 
nearly all the night that was gone, and was in his cabin taking some 
rest. But there’s very little rest for ship-masters, who need to 
have as many eyes as you find in a peacock’s tail, that they might 
close two or three of them at a lime, if ever they’re to get the 
amount of sleep that all other kinds of people, barring nautical 


HOUXT) THE GALLEY FIRE. 


r>4 

men, fiml needful to keep themselves alive on. Well,- sir, T called 
the captain and told him that the weather looked threatening, and 
straightway he came on deck and took a squint around. The wind 
was freshening slowly and surely, and the top -sails and top gallant 
sails, out of whose cloths the wet of last night’s squalls of rain w'ere 
not yet dried, were stretching as if the}’' would burst under it; and 
the water to leeward washed like boiling milk all along the scup- 
pers as the ship was rushed by the pressure, taking flie seas with a 
floating jump, and making them roar as she split them with her 
sharp ^em and sent them seething in white smothers on either hand. 
There were clouds crawling up out of the thickness in the west 
and south, and passing like smoke over the mast-heads, and there 
was a look of racing about the whole ocean with the sailing of 
those bits of vapor, and the pelting Of the ship, and the wild, hur- 
rying, rolling of the seas, along which there were sea-birds screech- 
ing as they skimmed in their low flight through the driving spray in 
pursuit of us. 

“Well, sir, the fore-top-gallant sail was furled and the watch 
lay aft to roll up the mrrtn-sail; but not for long did we hold on 
with the main-top-gallant sail; that was clewed up soon, and the 
wind freshened as sail was diminished; so that, although half 
stripped of canvas, the ship was keeling to it as before, while 
there was the hard look of a gale of wind in the sky that you 
saw gray between the scud; and the, thickness w^as blowing up 
nearer and nearer, making a mere biscuit’s-throw of the horizon, 
so that the seas looked lumping things as they rolled, all of a sud- 
den like, out of the haze, and were under the ship and standing up 
on either hand of her almost as fast as they seemed to be formod. 
We were now under top-sails and foresail only— of the square canvas 
— when on a sudden there comes f- bit of a lull, and a sort of silence 
aloft that sounded strange after the roaring, and a great noise of 
washing waters all around; and then plump sweeps up the wind in 
a wild out-fly out of the south-west, driving the ship forward until 
the foam of the cut- water looked to be smothering her head. All 
hands were called to shorten sail, the three upper top-sail halyards 
were let go, the starboard braces rounded in, and the helm shifted to 
bring the ship to her course. Four able seamen and four boys 
went aloft to furl the upper mizzen-top-sail. You know the old 
story: the light hands well out, the older hands in the slings and 
quarters, and the sail swelling up like a sheet of iron to the wind, 
that blew fair into it in a storm betwixt the two yards. 1 had my 
eye on those men 1 am speaking of, when a blast like a squall 
swept the canvas out of their fists, and in a breath one of them fell 
with a twirl and a toss of his clinched hands oft the yard, striking 
the half-round of the poop a blow that came along with the yell of 
the wind in a frightful thud; and with that, rebounding as a ball 
might, over he goes into the yeast and froth along-side. It is a 
horrible thing to happen; it will stop the breathing of the strongest 
tor a minute. Tlie fellows on the yard roared out, “ Man over- 
board 1“ I sprang aft, and had a life buoy in my hand in an in- 
stant, which I threw fair, as I prayed and believed, to the yellow 
patch of sou’wester that 1 saw dark on the foam of the side of a 
sea; but the wind blew tiie liglfl thing, like a feather, to leeward 


EOUND THE GALLEY FILE. 


6 - 

of him. But he was swimming — there was life in him— thougli 
Jiiam you should have heard the thump of his fall, and theu though' 
-of him struggling there with his great sea-boots full or water, an 
his heavy oil-skins dragging him down, and a rushing of froth 
over him every time that a sea swept him up into the snow of it- 
breaking crest. Well, sir, we went to work smartly ; the hands came 
lunibling down from aloft, and the ship was brought to with hei 
main-top-sail aback, while half a dozen of us were obeying with, 
mad haste the order to clear away the quarter-boat ready for low- 
ering. 

“ Meanwhile a hand remained in the mizzen-top-sail yard to keep 
the poor fellow in sight, and he was shouting that the man 
swimming, and swimming strong; that he didn’t seem to seethe 
life-buoy, but that he wa^ struggling bravely; and I, seeing lhi.> 
too, and driven half mad by the pitiful sight of that sailor and ship- 
mate fighting the whole ocean, as I may put it, and battling with 
an English seaman’s courage, sang out, “ Who’s going to volun- 
teer for the boat?” Tliete w’as no hanging back; it was just a leaj' 
to see who should be first. As fast as they could tumble in, there 
they were, six ot them, the pick of the crew — merchant seamen, 
sir-^whom we’re being taught to despise; there they were, 1 say, 
■with the others handling the falls, and every one looking as it the 
■saving of the life of the man astern was his business and nobody’s 
•else; for he was a shipmate, and that means a brother at sea, sir, 
v/hen the forecastle holds real sailors. 

“ It was four o’clock iu the afternoon, and the mist was driving 
between the masts. { was in charge of the boat, but try my dead 
best I could not help her being badly stove before we got away, and 
■fhe water came iu fast as we headed for the spot where the man 
was last seen. You must go thrdugh it to realize the difference be- 
tween the deck of a ship pitching and rolling, no matter how 
heavily, and the feel of an open boat released from her side in the 
same sea. The solid deck you’re fresh from makes the contrast 
fearfully sliarp, and I can well believe what I remember reading in 
your yarn of the wreck of the Indio, n Chief, that the survivors of 
her crew when in the life-boat owned to being more frightened by 
the fearful tossing and jumping of the buoyant craft than they were 
when in their foretop, with the hull of the ship going to pieces 
under them. We could only pull four oars, for two men had all 
tlieir work in baling the boat, one with a souwester and the other 
■with a sea-boot, those being our balers. My duty lay at the helm, 
in watching over the men and looking out for the seas. Bitterly 
cold it was, the sun going down, the haze thick around, and the 
ship a mere heaving darkness upon it when we had measured but 
a few lengths from her. I looked narrowly about me, but could 
see nothing of the man. Sometimes a lump of green water tum- 
bling over the foam would show like his head, and my heart would 
leap; but the next moment the clear sea would roll away from the 
blowing froth and exiDlain what the deception was. We pulled to 
the buoy, but it was empty. 

“ Then one of the men said, Supposing even Bill had not been 
burt by the fall, surely he couldn’t live in such a sea as this.’ And 
vanother said, * Think of his wraps and oil-skins, sir. I’he hesl 
s 


66 


BOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


swimmer in the world couldn’t hold up all these minutes under such 
drags.’ Blit they spoke not as if they wished to give up, but as if 
prepaiing lliemselves for the disappointment. Had he hint him- 
selt more tlnin we could know? Was he broken and dying when 
he touched the water, and weie his struggles there the despairing 
efforts of a broken and dying man? We strained our eyes, but 
could see nothing save the boiling heads of the seas which came 
roaring dowm upon us and threatened with every desperate swing 
to fill the boat. Still we kept up heart. ‘Another pull, boys! im- 
possible to go back without him!’ 1 would cry, while Ihe two fel- 
lows in the bottom were chucking the water out over the side, and 
the thickness stood like a wall around. 

“ Well, tor three quarters of an hour did we hang about, pulling 
in all directions, and thinking only of finding and saving him; and 
then we gave up and looked round for the ship. 1 could not see 
her. 1 sung out to the men, ‘ Do you see the 8hip?’^and they turned 
their heads upon their shoulders to look; and the chap in the bow 
cries out. when we were standing nearly end on the side ot a sea,. 

‘ There she is, I think.’ 

“Well, to be sure, I could see her, but it might as well have 
been the thickening ot the mist tliat way as the ship,, tor she made 
a shadow scarcely noticeable, and I looked with dismay at the dis- 
tance that lay before us to row over, and at the water that was com- 
ing into the boat as fast as the two men could bale it out. and at the 
terrible sea around us. We had got into such a situation that the 
seas ran right abeam, and every send drove us to leeward, and some- 
times the mist swept down so thick that there was never a man of 
us all who could see the ship, though, thanks b<i to Heaven, it did 
not come to our losing sight of her for good. It was a bad job for 
us that the heaving and straining ot the boat caused her to leak 
worse and worse. But for her leaking 1 could have pul the two- 
men who were baling her to the oars, and they would have been 
just the sort of help we wanted ; instead of which, they were scarcely 
able to prevent the boat from filling. It would, however, have 
been destruction to us to have set more men than those two at the 
job they were on. Every moment was precious; the afternoon 
was fast waning; in a short while the night would be upon us, and 
1 knew quite surely that if it came before we fetched the ship we 
were doomed men. Oh, sir, it was a fierce bit of labor! In the 
midst of our struggles a squall of sleet blew down and hid the 
whole surface of the ocean to within our own length of us; but it 
cli ared off, and when it was gone the mist thinned somewhat, and 
gave us a belter view of the ship, at whose peak we could see a 
color streaming as a signal of recall. Never was any man of us 
nearer to death in his life than he was during the time we occupied in 
reaching the vessel. That we did reach her you may reckon, or I 
should not be here to tell you this story. But by the hour we had 
pulled across her head, and dropped along the port side of her, the 
water in the boat was up to tiie thwarts, we showed scarce more 
than our gunwale, it was almost dark, the sea had increased in vol- 
ume, and tlie wind was blowing half a hurricane. We were fairly 
exhausied when we gained the deck, but, humbly grateful as we 
were for the preservation of our lives, ne’er a one of us could caa4 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE, 


67 

a look over the quarter in the place where our shipmate had gone 
<3own, and where the darkness of the evening now lay, with the 
white foam showing with startling clesrness upon the sides of those 
black, rushing hills, without feeling that our thankfulness would 
liave been deeper had we been allowed to rescue the man whom we 
had beeu very near to losing our lives to save." 


m AN OPEN BOAT. 

Loneliness has many forms. It is Selkirk, imprisoned in an 
Island, with nothing but the wash of the surf to break the shocking 
stillness; it is the mountain-climber missing his way, and passing 
the long night amid the tremendous silence of towering hills and 
black valleys; or it is the loneliness described by Byron, that of a 
man solhary in crowds. But what sense of solitude can equal that 
felt by shipwrecked men in a small open boat, surrounded by a 
universe of waters, with no other chance for their lives than such as 
a passing ship may bring? It . is not the first hour, nor yet the first 
day; the agony of such a trial lies in the slow maddening of the 
mind by fruitless expectation; the deception of llie white shoulders 
of clouds, which look like ships as they seem to linger a moment 
upon the horizon before sailing above it; the straining of the aching 
sight against the pitiless, vacant sea-line; the sense that death is 
-close at hand, though a bundled deaths may have been suffered be- 
fore the skeleton’s clutch is upou the sufferers. 

ISTo kind of human anguish is more terrible, and no stories catch 
a tighter hold of the imaginalion tlian those which relate it. Gen- 
enitious have shuddered and generations will yet shudder over the 
grand and soul-moving description in “Don Juan." The raft of 
the Medusa is an immortal horror. The narratives which are at 
cnce the most fascinating and depressing in the marine records are 
always those which concern the sufferings of human beings adrift 
in an open boat in the midst of a great ocean. The deep is un- 
changing; in the misery it works. Our ships are of iron; they are 
propelled through the calm sea by an irresistible power faster than 
a gale of wind would drive them; they are of proportions so colossal 
that many of them could sling the “ tall schippes " of our forefathers 
over their sides, and stow them on skids as they stow their boats; 
and yet just the sarnie sort of sufferings are endured now by mariners 
as were (experienced by them in the days when a vessel of thirty tons 
was reckoned big enough not only to seek the North-west Passage 
but to hunt the unnavi^ahd oceans after continents. 

I heard once a story that seemed fitter for the lips of an ancient 
mariner, like Coleridge’s, than the mouth of a seaman who lives in 
an age in wiiich the Atlantic is crossed in eight days, and in which 
the Cape of Good Hope has been pretty nearly extinguished by a 
narrow water-way across a hundred miles of sand. The hearing it 
took me back in imagination to the days of the ship Thomas, of 
Liverpool, the Lady Hobart packet, the Yankee ship Peggy, tin; 
French East India Company’s Prince, and I know not how many 
more old craft wiiich ages since became phantom vessels, to be 


68 ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE* 

wrecked again and again upon the dark and noiseless oceans of 
tradition. 

“ njtnie,” began informant, “ is William Pearce. 1 have 
used the sea for above eiglit-and-twenty year, have sailed in all: 
kinds of ships in all sorts of capacities — boy. ordinary seaman, sail- 
maker, bo’sun’s mate; crossed the Atlantic seventeen times, and 
have been round the world eight; been shipwrecked thrice; like- 
wise overboard during seven hours of darkness, and picked up at 
daybreak with ray head in a life-buoy; know pretty nigh the best 
and the worst of the weather that’s to be found at sea; and am 
therefore capable of taking my oath to this, that of all the bad joba 
that ever 1 was in or that ever I heard of any other sailor being in,, 
there’s nothing to beat the sufferings us men of the schooner 
Warhrick liad to endure when the foundering of that vessel obliged, 
us to take to the boat. 

“The schooner sailed from Runcorn with a cargo of coals for 
Plymouth. She was twent}^ years old, and a trifie over a hundred 
tons burden. There w^ere five of a crew, and nothing particular 
happened until we were abreast of the Bristol Channel, when there 
blew up a heavy gale of wind from the east’^ard. There’s no call 
to describe it; it was of the regular kind, full of wet, and raising a 
sea a sight too big for a vessel of one hundred tons pretty night 
chock-a-blocR with coal and with twenty years of hard use in her 
hull. How'ever, we scraped through the gale, and two or three 
more that followed fast, until one morning we were somewhere be- 
twixt the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast. It was dark, thick 
weather, blowing and raining hard, the sea rough, bitter cold— as- 
you may calculate it was, the month being January — and every- 
thing invisible that was more than half a mile off. ' The wind was- 
east and north, and we were ratching along under very small can- 
vas, when, being turned m, as it was my watch below, and the Land 
o’ Nod close aboard, 1 was roused up by a loud cry on deck and a 
tremendous crash. I tumbled up as fast as ever 1 could pelt, and 
found the schooner going down and the men getting the only boat 
we carried overboard. It was no time tor questions. You could 
feel the vessel settling under your feet, just like standing on soft 
mud and sinking in it. Tlie seas were washing over the deck, and 
growing heavier as lier bulwarks sank lower. There was nothing^ 
but white water to be seen on the starboard bow — no rocks, nothing; 
showing above the froth; hut 1 didn’t want any one to tell me that 
we ban run foul of the Seven Stones. Tltere was no time to do 
more than launch the boat and roll into her. Daly was the lust man 
in, and scarce had he jumped when the schooner plumped clean out 
of sight, going down like a deep-sea lead,, so suddenly that it took 
my breatli away. 

“ There’s no sensation worse than that a man feels when he looks 
for the ship he’s been forced to abandon and duds her vanished 
under the sea. The ocean never seems so wide as then. The whole 
world appears to be made of water. Sailors are a class of men lit- 
tle given to talking; and when they come clear of such jobs as this 
they say next to nothing about it, and so people think that either- 
they’re men without the capacity of feeling, or else their sufferings, 
were not equal to what might be supposed. Had people who talce; 


KOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


69 


these views been in that boat alon_^ with us, they’d look sharp in 
altering their opinions. The suddenness of the disaster — of being, 
one moment safe, and the next tossins on the sea in a fmall boat, 
with the schooner gone, nothing saved but what we stood in, not a 
morsel of food nor a drop ot drink of any kind, the wind blowing 
fit to freeze the eyes out of our heads, every mother’s son of us 
soaked to the skin, and drifting fast away toward the Atlantic —took 
our senses away tor a spell. We sat holding on and staring like daft 
men. The captain was the first to rally. 

“ He called out, ‘ A bad job; it’s a bad job, lads!’ several times, 
and then said, ‘ No use letting her drive too fast. We mustn’t let 
her blow away into the ocean;’ imd with that we lashed the two 
oars to the painter and flung ’em overboard. 

“ This brought her head to wind and slow’ed her drift; but, for 
all that, every hour was carrying us further and further toward the 
open sea, and away from the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast, 
wdiich were our best chance, so that all the hope that was left us 
was being picked up by a passing vessel. Tet there could be no 
worse month in the year than January for that likelihood. How 
long were the gales and the frost going fo let us last? We were far 
to the nor’ard of the fairwaj^ in a part of the sea that everj^ vessel 
was bound to give a wide berth to. The weather, as 1 liave said, 
was so thick that you couldn’t see half a mile off; and though of 
course it was sure to clear in time and open out the horizon, so that 
vessels could have a view around them, the question was, where 
should we be when it came on fine? 

“ Unlike a good many others who have gone through such dread- 
ful messes as this, oui sufferings began the moment we tumbled into 
the boat. In the lowest latitudes that ever 1 was in I never felt such 
cold. Had the w'ater been fresh our clothes would have froze into 
coverings of ice. The air was full of spray, and squalls of sleet 
came rolling up. We sat in the bottom of the boat in a lump, to 
keep her steady, and for the shelter of one another’s bodios, and, 
those who wmre to windward— that is, in the forepart — would shift 
from time to time and others take their place. We had no mast nor 
sail, nothing but the two oars we rode to. It w'as a Monday, and 
all through the daylight we sat lifting our eyes above the gunwales, 
and trying to pierce the haze for a vessel. It w’as blowing about, 
half a gale of wind, and it kept steady. Now and then we’d ship a 
dose of water, and bale it out with our caps; but it kept our feet 
soaking, and I reckon it was worse than being without boots at all. 
The boat did w'ell, and the pars were a kind of breakwater, and 
helped her. After four in the afternoon the night drew on. We 
never could get used to the darkness. The daytime was bad enough, 
but the night made our sufferings maddening. The wind, when 
the sea was black, would take the feel of solid ice. We couldn’t 
see one another, and that made talking a kind of foolishness; and 
so wm never spoke — which caused every one to feel himself a lonely 
man upon the sea. Likewise the noise of the w’afer would sound 
stronger. In the daytime 1 took no notice, but at night I’d find 
myself listening to the crying of the wind up in the dark, and the 
hissing that rose all over the ocean from the breaking of the waves. 

“ 1 don’t know what my mates did; but that first night I never 


KOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


70 

closed my eyes, never tried to shut them, never thought of sleep. I 
saw the dawn come, but the haze was too thick to let the light 
show on the horizon; it was overhead as well as around when the 
morning broke; there was no darkness that you’ll find hanging in 
the west at daybreak. Indeed, 1 believe the sim was up above. Hie 
sea before any light came, so thick it was. All the men were awake, 
and dreadful they looked, as of course 1 did. One of them was 
named Burke. I noticed him at once, and thought he was dying. 
He lay atiiwartships, with his back against the starboard side of the 
hoat, and there was a strange working in his fingers, like the move- 
ment of a woman’s hands opening a skein of thread. 

“ The captain said, ‘ For God’s sake look around, lads, and see if 
there’s anything in sight.’ 

“ The sea ran high, and made it dangerous for any of us to stand 
up. for fear of capsizing the boat: so we hung over the gunwale, 
with our chins on a level with it, and stared into the driving smother 
with all our might; but there was nothing to be seen but the break- 
ing seas when we were hove up, and the water standing like w’alls 
on either hand when we dropped into the troughs. All at once 
Burke sat up, and began ter sing out for a drink of water. He 
talked as if he believed we had it and wouldn’t give it, which was 
the first sign of his insanity. The captain tried to pacify him, 
speaking very kindly, and seeking to cheer him. 

“ ‘ We have outlived a da)’^ and a night,’ said he. ‘ Keep up your 
heart, mate; we may have a thousand ton ship under us belore it 
comes dark again,’ 

“ But Burke kept on crying for water, saying that he was dying 
for it. and pointing to his throat; and then, falling on all fours, he 
puts Ids face to the salt-water washing about in the bottom of the 
hoat and sucked up several mouthfuls. Well, it seemed to do him 
no hurt, and he lay quiet. Soon after this I spied sonietliing knock- 
ing about in the sea a few fathoms astern, and called the skipper’s 
attention to it. He said it was one of some kegs of butter that had 
been aboard the schooner, bo we pulled the oars in and dropped 
•down to it, and picked it up. We broke it open and ate the butter 
111 fistfuls, being mad with hunger; but it was as salt as brine, and 
the effect of it was to make our thirst raging. The knife we had 
used to open the keg lay in the bottom of the boat, and Burke, on a 
sudden turning over, seized hold of it, jumped up and fell upon 
the captain. He hit him once, but the knife didn’t pierce through 
the thick jacket the skipper had on, and before he could raise his 
hand again we dragged him down and kneeled upon him. 

“ Tire re was no worse part in all that dreadful time than this. 
The midman’s face was a terrible sight; almost black it was. 
He snapped about him with his teeth, and his cries and curses were 
things it brings the sweat upon my face to talk about. Think of 
onr situation; mad with thirst ourselves and struggling with a 
madman, a killing north-easter blowing like knives through our 
frozen bodies, the sea leaping and roaring around us, and nothing 
between ns and the bottom but the little old boat we were in. We 
were loo weak, and in too much suffering ourselves, to remain 
iiolding the madman down, and finding him quiet we let go, and 
squatted one close to another for warmth; but scarcely had we 


HOUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 


71 


hauled off from the poor wretch when he jumps up and throws 
himself overboard. ‘ ^liud!’ shouted the skipper — ‘ one’s enough)’ 
fearing that it we all got to the side Burke had leaped trom, we 
should upset the boat. 1 was the nearest, and as lie came close 1 
leaned over and got him by the hair, and dragged him into the 
boat. He was pretty nigh dead, and gave us no more trouble. 

“ Well, sir, the night came down a second time, finding us living, 
but without the looks ot live men. 1 made sure 1 should never see 
another daybreak. My thirst was not so sharp as it had been; but 
1 don’t know whether the dull throbbing in my throat, the kind of 
lockjaw feeling in my mouth, the burning in my tongue as though 
it were a lump of hot iron, was not more torturing than when the 
craving was fiercer. All night long it blew a strong wind, with 
now and then a squall of sleet and rain, and hour after hour two of 
the men. Parsons and Daly, were groaning in the bottom of the 
boat. VVhen the light came I looked to see wdio was alive, and my 
eyes falling on Burke, 1 called out, ‘ Dead!’ The captain leaned 
down and felt him, and said, ‘ Yes, he’s gone. He’s the first. God- 
have mercy upon us!” and catching hold of my shoulder he stood 
up to search the sea, but the haze was as thick as it had been all the 
time, and he threw himself down with his hands over his face. 
Presently, looking at the body, he said, ‘ We must bury him; but 
first, my lads, let us say a prayer for him, and for ourselves.’ We 
all knelt while the captain prayed, and when he had done we lifted 
the body and let it go overboard. 

” The madness that thirst creates broke out strong in Daly and ‘ 
Parsons when the body was gone, and dowm they dropped as Burke 
had, and lapped up the salt-w’ater in the bottom of the boat like 
dogs would. The captain implored them not to drink, but they 
never heeded him or me, who likewise entreated them. However,, 
no harm seemed to come of it. Well, sir, there’s no need for me to 
describe that Wednesday nor our third night in that open boat. 
Thursday morning came, making the fourth day, and to our joy 
the weather cleared, the wind shifted and moderated, and the sea 
went down. We got the oars in, rigged up one as a must, and two 
of us having oil -skin coats on, we joined them so as lo form a sail, 
made a yard of the other oar, and putting the boat before the wind, 
which was blowing a light breeze from the south’ard, headed, a& 
the captain judged, for the Irish coast. All the day long we kept 
a wild lookout, as you may reckon, for any passing ship, but never 
once, not the furthest distance, did such an object heave in sight. 
We might have been sailing in the middle of the Pacific. Nature 
in us was almost numbed. We had come to such a pass that we 
were too faint and exhausted to feel the craving of hunger and thirst. 
At least I can speak for myself, and it’s in that way I account for 
my suffering less at the end than 1 did at the beginning of the dread- 
ful time we went through. It was still cold, but nothing like the 
bitter cold of the gale and the heavy seas and squalls. W e reckoned 
by the sun that the wind hung steady, and we let the boat slip be- 
fore it; that was all that could be done. If we were to sail at all we 
were bound to keep the breeze over our stern, seeing there was 
nothing to draw but a couple of oil-skins secured to the oar. 

” But the coming on of Thursday night was like the bitterness of 


72 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


death itself, sir— indeed it was. All day loncj we had reckoned 
upon sighting something before the sun went. Every hour we had 
hoped, and prayed, and believed would heave up some sort of vessel 
to come to our rescue; and, therefore, when it drew up black, only 
a few stars among the slow clouds, and we were brought face to 
face with another long winter’s night, my heart failed me alto- 
gel her; I felt that there was a curse upon us, and that we were 
doomed men, singled out to die of famine, the most cruel of deaths, 
because the longest. Think of ninet 3 ^-six hours in an open boat, 
in January, in the Chops, a north-east gale blowing most of the 
time, with never a morsel of food except the salt butter, and no 
.drink but the salt water washing in the boat! And yet when the 
Friday morning came we were still alive, the captain steering, 
doubled up with with faintness and the cold, his knees against his 
mouth, and his heatl lolling for want of strength in his neck; Daly 
and Parsons lying still as dead men under the thwarts; and me in 
the bows, too weak and broken-hearted even to cast my eyes around 
the sea to notice if there was a vessel in sight. 

“The morning passed; the afternoon passed. Were we to go 
through another night? The sun was within half an hour of his 
setting when Parsons, who was leaning his breast on the gunwale, 
stood upright aud pointed. His mouth was full of froth, and as he 
tried to speak the foam flew out his of lips, but no words he spoke; 
it was naught but a kind of death-rattle in his throat. We all looked 
in the direction he pointed to, and saw a large sailing-vessel heading 
right down for us. How we watched her! all of us standing up, 
never speaking, and only moving with the roll and toss of the boat, 
it took her an hour to approach us, and then she hove us a line; 
but her people had to sling us aboard. None of us could move. 
Nothing but the excitement of seeing her had allowed us to stand. 
The moment the line was in the boat and we were along-side, we 
all became as helpless as babies. 

“ The vessel’s name, sir? She was the Austrian bark Orad Kar- 
•7(9mA;,xomn)auded by so humane a man that 1 feel fit to cry when I 
think of him and his kindness to us poor, miserable, shipwrecked 
English sailors. That’s the story, sir, or as much of it as there is 
any call to relate. Five days and four nights in the month of Jan- 
uary in an open boat, most of the time blowing heavily! The tale’s 
know’n at Plymouth— it’s known at Runcorn— it’s known to Mr. 
Hopkins, the agent of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society at Plym- 
outh. And I’ll tell you somebody else it’s known to, sir — some 
.one as’ll swe&r to every word of it, and that’s me.” 


WAITING FOR A SHIP. 

The Shipping-office in Tower Hill is a place where seamen, fire- 
men, stokers, and others assemble in the hope that captains in want 
•of crews will come and pick out the best men among them to “ sign 
•on,’’ as it is called 1 was induced to visit it the other day by 
hearing a sailor complain bitterly of the filthy state of it. “ Neg- 
lect,’’ said he, “ is our lot; hut tiie condition of that shipping-office 
beats my time. It’s all dirt and Dutchmen, aud if ye want to see 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE, 


75 


Eometliing to make you reflective, just trot down the steps and take- 
a turn round the yard the nexi time you’re passing that way.’^ 
When finally 1 did trot down the^steps 1 found myself in a kind of 
court-yard, flanked on the one hand by the shipping-offices— grimy 
doors, leading into gloomy interiors— and on the other hand by .a 
species of shed, partitioned into stone rooms, with hard and painful 
seats against the walls, and unwholesome draughts of dampish wind 
eddying about them. 

It was a gloomy day — rain had fallen, and pools of muddy water 
gleamed here and there in the yard; the brown and stoo})ing Lon- , 
don sky threatened more wet. and flung a shadow that made the- 
shipping-office audits yard and its condemned celMike rooms under 
the shed an unspeakably cheerless, depressing, and miserable pict- 
ure. Some sixty or seventy men stood or moved about in groups 
in the yard, or were seated in the cells under the shed. 

1 was hardly prepared to witness so large an assembly, and re- 
mained neat the steps for a little while surveying them. A few of 
them were decently attired— one or two respectably and comfortably 
dressed in good clothes and clean linen; but a large proportion of 
them were, so far as their costume went, little better than scare- 
crows. Some were clad merely in shirt and trousers, with their 
naked feet thrust into old shoes or boots; here and there was a red 
or blue shirt, or a figure buttoned up in such a manner as to sug- 
gest that under the ragged old coat there was no shirt at all. “ And 
is this,” thought I, ” the Britisli sailor of the nineteenth century? 
is this the original of those rubicund features, those flowing breeches, 
that tarpaulin hat on nine hairs, those w^ell-polished shoes, twink- 
ling in the light-hearted measures of the hornpipe, which are offered 
by novelists, dramatists, and theater lessees as accurate representa- 
tions of the jolly tar we are so fond of joining in choruses about, and 
whom we gaze at with such patrotic enthusiasm as he hitches up 
his breeches, turns his quid, and smites his timbers?” 

Every crowd of human faces is full of variety, but no crowd that 
ever 1 looked at had the variety submitted by the countenances of « 
these sixty or seventy men who were ” wailing for a ship.” The 
negro’s face— flat, bland, and open-mouthed — was, of course, not 
wanting; square cheeks, hollow cheeks, high cheeks; complexions 
black, brown, and yellow; eyes of every pattern and sluuie, from 
the small, twinkling blue of the North-country to the filmy and 
red-webbed optics of the gin-soaked cockney, combined, with the 
different build and shapes of the men, the appearance of their 
clothes, the various head-coverings, to make up a truly singular 
scene. 

1 stepped forward and got among a little bunch of men, of whom, 
addressing myself to one, 1 asked what sort of shelter that dirty 
and wretched shed and those bleak and stony cells offered in the 
winter, when the wind blew with an edge and the sleet and rain 
fell. Ko notice had been taken ot me before, but on my making 
this inquiry the eyes of the wiiole group w’ere fixed upon me, and 
half a dozen voices answered at once. The meaning of the replies 
was lost in the confusion, but the noise was like a signal ; for 1 can 
truly say that within a few seconds of my liaviner asked that question 
every man in ibat yard and every man that hart been lounging in 


IIOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


74 

the cells had gathered about me, so that before 1 very well knew 
whal was happening? I toiiud myself — pretty tightly squeezed — iu 
the center of a mass ot men, the outer portions of wliom pressed 
eagerly upon the inner to hear and see what was goiiig forward. 
It was like a mutiny on a large scale; and when 1 looked around at 
the mass of faces, and tasted the tobacco-laden breath of the near 
people blowing hot against my cheeks, I felt that nothing was wanted 
to complete the suggestion of revolt but the gleam ot a score of 
sheath-knives flourished in the air, “Give me a little room, my 
lads,” said 1, working with my elbows; and having treed myself 
somewhat, 1 said, “ there seems no lack of men here; captains 
ought to find no difficulty in manning their ships.” 

“ They don’t want Englishmen; it’s Dutchmen they take,” 
shouted two or three voices. 

“ Here’s a man,” called out some one, pointing into the left of 
the crowd, “ who’s been walking this yard for five months.” 

“ Five months, as true as the words I use is English,'” bawled a 
hoarse voice. “ But they won’t have me because my name’s John- 
son. If it was Unks von Dunks, I’d ha’ been woyaging o’er and 
o’er again iu the time I’ve been kicking my heels about starving 
here,” 

“ Scoff en von Romp would do as well,” said a man near me. 
“ Don’t matter what the name is, so long as it sounds Dutch.” 

“ By Dutch I suppose you mean foreigners of all kinds?” said 1. 

“ Ay, they’re all Dutchmen!” was the shout. 

“ But why is it that Dutchmen are preferred to Englishmen?” 1 
asked. 

The hubbub raised by this obliged me to hold up my hand and 
entreat silence; but it would not do. Every man’s mind was full of 
the grievance, and, amid the chorus of replies, I barely succeeded 
iu catching such answers as “ Dutchmen ’ll ship for two pound a 
month!” “ Dutchmen ’ll eat anything!” “ Englishmen won’t put 
up with the messes Dutchmen ’ll swallow!” “ Skippers can rope’s- 
end Dutchmen, but they durs’n’t serve Englishmen so!” “ It’s the 
Dutch crimps as does it!” and so forth. 

It was difficult to hear these cries and watch the sea of surging 
heads and faces around me with unmoved gravity. There was 
something to touch the very dullest capacity of appreciating the 
ridiculous in the astonishing contrasts of physiognomies, and in the 
multifarious expressions which adorned the poor fellows’ counte- 
nances; but 1 am not sure that the appeal made to my laughter did 
not owe much of its force to the sorrowful element iu it, to a 
quality of pathos lying close to humor. Many of these faces had 
a pinched look, that was painfully expressive of want, if not of 
positive starvation; and sad indeed, it seemed to me, w^as the sight 
of it in men who carried the manners of real seamen, and who ap- 
peared to me to be fit for any forecastle afloat, and for any duty 
that a sailor is expected to understand, 

“ I suppose you all come here with certificates of conduct in your 
pockets?” said I, when the hubbub had ceased. 

Instantly a crowd of fists were thrust under my nose, filled with 
documents, and “Here’s mine!” and “ Here’s mine!” “V. G. 
everyone of ’em!” was roared out in twenty or thirty voices, i 


KOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


75 

looked at some of these certificates, and found the letters “ V. 

(very ^ood) indorsed on the backs of all that I examined. 

*' D’ye want to ship, sir?” sun^ out a fellow while 1 was glaiic- 
ing over these papers; “ I’ve got two V. G. certificates in my pockety 
and as I’ve not had anything to eat to-day you shall have ’em both 
for a couple of shillings.” 

‘‘Are certificates often sold in this fashion?” said I, of a quiet- 
looking man standing along side of me. 

‘‘ Sold!” he exclaimed, indignantly, ” what’s to hinder 'em? If 
a man sticks to the name that’s on the certtficate who’s to know? 
and so ye get men shipping themselves with false characters, no 
more fit for sailor’s work than if they woe green-grocers.” 

‘ ‘ Perhaps that’s one reason why skippers and owners prefer Dutch- 
men to Englishmen,” said 1. lint this raised another storm; they 
shouted that more rascality went on in that way among Dutchmen 
than British sailors; that the reason was not that, but because, as I 
had heard, Dutchmen shipped for wages no Englishman would look 
at, and put up with food, accommotlation, and treatment which no 
Englishmitn would endure, and likewise because there was a deal of 
underhand crimping work going on between the foreign boarding- 
house runners and mates and captains, and so on. 

Here the emotions of these sixty or seventy men brought them 
pressing so heavily around me, that my anxiety to hear their state- 
ments was swamped in the labor of breathing and the straggle to 
liberate myself. I bawled to them to make way, as 1 wanted to 
have a look at the rooms under the shed, on which they drew back 
and let me out, though they followed at my heels as I passed from 
one room to another, talking and arguing hotly^, calling marine 
blessings down on the heads of all Dutchmen, and wondering what 
good it was nowadays being born an Englishman, when even a 
Finn, whom, in the olden times, no sailor liked to be shipmates 
with, was thought a better man? The rooms were middle-sized, 
damp, dark, and dirty compartments, and were meant to serve as 
waiting-rooms for the unhappy creatures who thronged the bleak 
and frouzy yard in the hope of being engaged by captains. 

It was like being in the dungeons in the Tower of London — which, 
by-the-way, stood close at hand — to pass tFirough these death-cold 
apartments, and view the legends, dictated Ity hopeless waiting, 
roughly scrawled in pencil upon the walls. Dirt and soot every- 
where! on the ceilings, on the floors, on the walls, on the benches, 
in the very atmosphere that filled the cheerless haunt. A strip of 
grating ran through the floors, disclosing the outline of a hot-water 
pipe; but it looked, in that grave, the very corpse of a heating ap- 
paratus; and when 1 asked if ever these stone rooms were made 
warm by that old, moldy, dirt and soot covered contrivance, the 
only answer 1 got was a loud, growling laugh, as if, exquisite as 
was the joke, it was likewise very offensive. And this, thought I, 
as I stood gazing with mingled astonishment and disgust at the 
picture of crime, neglect, and dirt, is the great London shipping- 
office, the medium for the vast and ever-growing port of London for 
the transaction of business between the masters and crews of ships! 
Who are these men, who come here in the hope of obtaining em- 
ployment by manning the fleets we are never weary of extolling as 


76 


KOUJN^D THE GALLEY FIRE, 


the source of Great Britain’s wealth and power, that they should 
be used in this manner, furnished for their long, weary, and often 
hopeless waiting with accommodation fouler, unwholesomer, odder, 
more soul-depressing than the worst prison that ever excited the 
horror and provoked the denunciations of the philanthropist? 

“ Has this place,” I asked, ” been long in this condition?” 

“ It used to be kept a little more decent,” v/as the reply; “but 
it’s been falling from bad to worse for many a month gone. Con- 
sidering the fees* we sailors have to pay, it’s a shame that we should 
have to put up with a place which no farmer who values the lives 
of his hogs would stow ’em in. I’ve been day after day down here, 
from the opening hour till the closing at four o’clock, for six weeks, 
hoping to be engaged; and 1 tell you, sir, that a man needs to be 
born a gutter-snipe, used to sleeping all his life under railway 
arches, and the likes of them places, not to feel the effects of such 
a slum as this upon his spirits, when day after day goes by and he 
has to keep on waiting here for a captain to single him out. You 
are seeing it now in summer, when the air’s warm; tlnnk of it in 
winter, sir, with the slush a foot thick, and the wind blowing into 
those waiting-rooms fit to turn your marrow into ice.” 

The Board of Trade is responsible for the conduct and keeping 
of this office. Have the officials of that great Department any con- 
ception of the state of the place? Is it ever visited by them? Do 
they know anything more about it than that it is situated some- 
where in the neighborhood of Tower Hill? Nothing more disgrace- 
ful is to be found in London. 

By degrees the men left me to resume their weary trudging up 
and down or to draw together in groups; on which, finding that I 
should be able to converse without the risk of suffocation, 1 went 
up to a well-looking, decently-dressed sailor-man, on whom I had 
had my eye for some time previously, and asked how long he had 
been waiting for a ship. 

” It will be three'weeks to-morrow,” he replied. 

” What are your certificates?” 

” 1 have four in my pocket,” he answered, producing them; and 
1 found that he had served in the several capacities of boatswain, 
sail-maker, and able seaman aboard sailing-vessels belonging to some 
of the best firms in London. 

” How long have you been at sea?” 

I Thirty years,” he replied. 

‘‘ And is it possible,” said I, running my eye over his neat suit 
of pilot-cloth, his clean blue shirt and silk handkerchief, and ad- 
miring his uniiMstakably sailorly appearance, and the frank expres- 
sion in his tanned face, ” that in this age, when one hears so many 
complaints of the difficulty of procuring good seamen, that a man 
who has been thirty years at sea, filled responsible posts, and holds 
honest vouchers to his efficiency and good conduct, cannot get a 
rship! What countryman are you?” 

” A Scotchman — an Aberdeen man.” 

” Wouldn’t the last ship you were in take you again?” 

” She discharged at Cardiff, and is now for sale. My wife lives 


* This was written in 1881. 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


77 

Just out ot the Commercial Road, and that’s why I’m in London,” 
he answered, ” I had only been home a week when I tried to get a 
ship a 2 :ain, tor I'm a poor man.” 

’* \Yhat are you willing to ship as?” 

“ As anything; I’m too poor to choose, sir. I’ll go as A. B. if I 
can get the berth. But this hanging about is eating up all our little 
savings.” 

“ Why can’t you get a berth?” said I. 

” Because the captains won’t take Englishmen,” he said. 

” What are their objections?” 

” Oh,” said he, “ objections are easily made it they’re wanted. 
Captains say that English crews desert, that they’re loafers, bad 
seamen, expect more waires than they’re worth, anil that the best of 
us are no better than vagrants, turnpike-sailors, who’ll never work 
so long as there’s a police-magistrate within hail, and who’ll soger* 
when they’re at sea. That may be true of some, but it’s false if 
said of the rest; and, depend upon it, sir, it don’t account for eighty 
per cent, of the men employed in the mercantile marine being 
‘Dutchmen.’ Our argument— the English sailor’s argument— is 
this: There are a lot ot foreign boarding-house keepers in London. 
We’ll take one of ’em. He has, say, tw'enty Dutchmen in his house, 
who pay him, each of ’em, sixteen shillings a week. Well, sir, 
most of these men have no means to last their expenses much be- 
yond a fortnight; so the boarding-house keeper or runner says, 

‘ Look here, my lads, you can’t stay here. 1 must get you a ship, 
^nd you’ll pay me live shillings apiece out of your allotment notes 
for doing it.’ To this they’re agreeable. The runner then goes 
down to a ship with his pocket full of his men’s certificates, hands 
them, along with a bribe, to the mate or master, who brings ’em to 
this office, and the Dutchmen, who’ve been told by the runner to 
come to Tower Hill, are called in to sign articles. It pays the 
runner, who gets five shillings a man for shipping them, besides his 
other expenses out of the allotment note, which he discounts at 
about fifty per cent. ; and it answers the purpose of the skipper, 
who pockets the bribe, and comes down to find a crew all ready cut 
and dried for him; but it leaves us Englishmen out in the cold, kick- 
ing our heels about, starving, any of us, and standing no shadow of 
a chance against the underhand roguery that goes on.” 

” This is a grave charge to bring against captains,” said I. 

” Grave or not,” he replied, ” go t^nd ask the opinion of British 
seamen all round the coast, and see whether or not this crimping 
swindle is understood by them and taken as the evil that’s filling 
English ships with foreigners.” 

“ But this kind of rascality is provided against; for the Act says 
that any person wffio receives any remuneration whatever other than 
the authorized fees for providing a seaman with employment incurs 
a penalty of twenty pounds.” 

‘‘Act or no Act,” he answered, contemptuously, ‘‘it’s done 
every day; it’s done every hour.” 

‘‘ Can’t you Englishmen catch one ot these ‘ Dutch ’ crimps and 
make an example of him?” 


* Loaf, skulk. 


78 


llOUKD THE GALLEY EIRE, 


“ It’s carried on so that it’s hard to prove,” he replied. Dutch- 
men won’t give evidence against one another; besides, the men sail 
away and are lost sight of, and there’s no seeing how to get at the 
runners.” 

What is the remedy, then? what is it you want?” I asked. 

” We English sailors want this,” he said; ” we ask that captains 
shall come to the shipping-oflSce and pick crews out of the crowd; 
not go and take certificates from crimps, and come down to find a 
crew ready bebmehand, to step in as they’re called in. Give us a 
fair chance along with the Dutchmen. If already eighty per cent, 
of the crews in English ships are foreigners, what’s to happen later 
on when there’ll not be an Englishman found in the forecastle of a 
ship that flies the red ensign? Why, the whole breed of sailors ’ll 
die out. Talk of Jack being a skulker, a scaramouch, a no-sailor! 
What’s the good of abusing him if you don’t give him a chance f 
It was said not long ago that owners meant to ship black crews, so 
hard did they find it to get Englishmen to act honestly by their em- 
ployeis But look at this,” said he, pulling a newspaper cutting 
lr<»m his pocket, ‘‘ look at this account of three Arabs, two Egyp- 
tians, and a negro locked up for thirty days for refusing to serve 
as firemen after they had signed articles; receiving three pounds 
apiece in money, and then striking because they wanted a month’s 
advance; getting it, and then refusing duty because they said they 
couldn’t get the allotment notes ca‘ihed; receiving the money from 
the captain, and still refusing duty, and threatening to cut the 
captain’s throat. Those were black men. Suppose they had been 
EngliHlimen? Dutchmen! why, sir, the most dreadful mutinies that 
ever happened have taken place aboard vessels manned with 
foreigners. Captains and owners know that. And does any man 
suppose,” he continued, speaking with great warmth, ” that if Eng- 
land sliould find herself at war with foreign nations, the Dutchmen 
who man her merchant-ships wouldn’t carry ’em into the enemy’s 
pons? Why, in crowding our forecastles with foreigners, sir, 
we’re striking the heaviest blows that could be aimed at this 
nation; we’re stopping all chance of recruiting the navy with sea- 
men to fight our battles; and we’re pulling our property into the 
hands of strangers who liate us, and who’d betray us by running 
away with it at the sound of the very first gun that was fired in 
anger.” And so saying he touched his cap. and left me to 
make my way out of the gloomy, dirty, melancholy haunt, followed 
as far as the steps that led up to the street by several men petitioning 
me to ” do something for them,” ” to get ’em a ship,” ” to help 
them out of this starving life.” 

Sailors are men of strong prejudices, and will often take wrong- 
headed views of things. To what, extent my informant spoke the 
truth, those who have a wide knowledge of the inner life of the 
mercantile marine will judge. But certainly I cannot persuade my- 
self that ship-masters act the part in relation to the foreign crimp 
which my seaman charged them with. I will go further, and assert 
that the shipment of foreign seamen is due, not to the British cap- 
tain’s dislike of the English sailor, but to his owner’s order that he 
shall man the vessel with ” Dutchmen ” only. But these admis- 
sions must still leave the current system of crowding the English 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 


79 


forecastle -with foreigners an iinmixed evil; nor do they affect the 
British sailor’s declarations as regards the energetic agent the foreign 
crimp, runner, or boarding-house keeper is allowed to be in the 
recruiting of our mercanliie marine. 

The subject is one that will probably, in due course, command 
attention. It is as unreasonable as it is impolitic that the “ Dutch- 
man ” sliould be caressed and honored with the full confidence of 
British employers while the English seaman, willing to work, is 
left to starve or decay. From ship-masters and mates, at least, 
some sympathy should be expected for him, for they are largely 
sharing in the neglect he is visited with, and finding themselves 
ousted out of their berths-b^’’ foreigners. The English sailor has 
many faults, but he certainly is not so bad but that he may be made 
better if something of the old good-will is shown him, and some- 
thing of the old helpful hand extended to him; and, let his demerits 
be what they will, depend upon it he is the man who should be 
found aboard an English ship, and that a fair specimen of him is 
worth as many “ Dutchmen ” as he has fingers. 


SK1PPEB8' WIVES AT SEA, 

Should owners allow captains to take their wives to sea with 
them? Opinions vary amone: master-mariners on this head. Some 
•think that a man has as much riijht to be taken care of at sea as 
ashore; that shirts, buttons, and linen want as much looking after in 
a ship as in a house; that captains are always the better for having 
their wives with them, because when in port they have an induce- 
ment to stop by the vessel and spend their evenings in the cabin, 
instead of roaming ashore at nightfall and bringing up in bad and 
perilous anchorages; and they also reason that a ship and cargo ar6 
bound to be rendered the safer by the captain’s wife being on 
board, as the skipper is sure then to be vigilant and keep his weather- 
eye lifting. Of course a cynic might say that so far as regards the 
safely of the ship, and the inducements to the skipper to spend his 
evenings when in harbor aboard of her, a good deal must depend 
upon the lady as wife and companion. 

I once met a captain who told me that he questioned whether an 
insurance could be effected on his ship and cargo were it to be sus- 
pected that he had any intention of carrying his wife to sea with 
him. “ We’re always quarreling,” said he— a remark* that sav^d 
me from asking him more questions. But what do the wives think? 
Are owmers’ objections to their accompanying their husbands agree- 
able to them? It is quite possible for a woman to love a sailor with- 
out loving the sea; and though owners deserve no praise for their 
hard and fast rule touching captains’ wives, as there is not an atom 
of sentimental regard for the ladies in it, 1 cannot but think it a 
good rule, as it saves man}’’ a woman from following her husband 
into a life to which nothing could have courted her but the sense of 
wifely duty. 

After all, what sailor would willingly subject the woman he loves 
to the perils of the deep by taking her with him voyage after voy- 


so 


ROUi^D THE GALLEY EIRE, 


:'ge? The farewells, it is true, are hard to say; the shot is ofterj 
.ow in the locker, and she and the children wiil have a hard job to- 
scrape through tlie months while father is absent— but then she is^ 
safe; there are no gales of wind to affright her, no mutinies, no* 

• ollisioDS; the little liome can never be waterlogged, nor can (here 
< ver arise the need of taking to the boats, and perishing of famine- 
after a week of unspeakable anguish. There have,, indeed, been 
many heroines amoiur captains’ wives, many brave and some truly 
heroical acts performed by them while at sea with their husbands. 

Nothing, for instance, in its way was ever more striking than the 
conduct of tlie wife of- the captain of the Edgar. All the crew, 
with the exception of the captain and mate, were prostrated with 
'ickness. The ship was homeward bound from Senegal, and the 
captain and mate had to work in the engine-room while the wife 
steered. In this way the vessel was safely brought home, though,. 
:.s was related in the newspapers at the time, seven of the crew 
died of the fever on the voyage. Here, perhaps, was a valuable 
^-ihip saved by a captain’s wife, for without her it is difficult to- 
imagine what the other two could have done; and those skippers 
who think owners unjust in forcing them to go to sea en gargon 
'-hould quote the case of the Edgar as a very strong commercial ar- 
gument— the only sort that is likely to prove successful — in favor 
^)f their views. 

But, as Lord Bacon said of dancing, so may 1 say of such instances- 
MS this; The better the worse. The greater the marine dangers in- 
which women distinguish themselves, the more resolved should hus- 
iiands be to guard their wives against the like risks. If it w^ere- 
always fine w’cather; if charts were always perfectl3' accurate; if 
ihere were no fogs and no shoals; if there w*as no danger in iron 
pyrites; if all surveyors were above suspicion; iron ships as w’elf 
constructed as they are highly classed; stevedores scientific people;, 
and if vessels were built by rules of common-sense instead of being: 
lire fragile products of a system of economy rendered vicious b3’ in 
-urance, then, indeed— the maritime millennium having arrived — 
might all skippers laudably combine to agitate until owners gave 
in, and allowed wives to ship with their husbands. 

But while the ocean and all the conditions of the ocean — wrecks,, 
leaks, piece-work, blind rivet-holes, “ boat iron,” storms, thick 
weather, and all the rest of it— remain as they, are, captains who 
are good husbands will keep the ladies ashore. It is only men of 
the Billy Taylor type who deserve to be followed to sea; and it i-'^ 

• mly the Hannah Snells ol this world who should attempt such 
pursuits. Over and over again one is reading of the wrecks in which 
the captain’s wife, and too often, alas! the captain’s little child, 
lose their lives. The poor things are always called ‘‘ passengers,”’ 
}.nd it is usually the ” passengers ” who seem to be drowned. Here 
ss one of these stories related by the captain himself; and, taking it 
as a typical thing, which all seamen may know it to be, I will ask, 
is it not well that owners— no matter the reasons which influence 
'hem— should object to their captains taking their wives to sea with 
them? 

‘‘ The steamer I commanded was a schooner-rigged vessel, built at 
•Low Walker, and you may call her tonnage in round numbers five. 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


81 


liundred. She lelt a North-country port on a certain day with a 
crew of peventeen hands and a cargo of coal, our destination being 
Cronsladt. My wife was on board, and this was the first voyage 
slie had made with me. We had been married two years, and in 
that time i had made several tri^s, as 3'ou may imagine; these voj’^- 
ages— as 1 suppose I must call a trip across the North Sea, 
or a run along the Mediterranean — occupying only a few weeks. 
Every lime I started, my wife wanted to go too; the owners had 
no objections, but 1 had. I told her the sea was all verj' well for 
lady passengers who had to cross it, but it was no place for a 
woman to make a home of. She w-ould do far better keeping house 
ashore, and making all ready for my return; and so 1 w'ould put 
her off. But when it came to this trip, she pleaded so earnestly, 
saying that she loved the sea, that the run would do her good, that 
she felt terribly lonely when 1 was away, and that her place was at 
my side let me be where I w'ould, that T could no longer refuse. 

‘ Very well,’ said 1 , ‘ tor this once;’ my notion being that one voy- 
age would do more for my wishes than flfly years of arguing, and 
so she came aboard. Well, sir, at the start, we had fine weather. 
It was in the spring; the air w^as sharp, but the sky was blue and 
the sunshine strong and cheerful; and, m}^ wife heartil}' enjoyed it. 
There was no sea-sickness to balk her relish; she was loo much a 
sailor’s lass* for that weakness. We were not much of a ship: you 
know the regular type — high bows, wall-sided, Plimsoll’s mark 
well aw'ash, 5mu may take your oath, the flying-bridge over the 
chart-house, and the pole compass forking up like a scarecrow 
above that. But my wife thought the vessel made a fine sight — 
merely, 1 expect, because I commanded her. 

“ Poor girl! poor girl! Often I’d come on deck and see her lean- 
ing over the side when she’d call to me to admire the line of froth 
there — as if that w.as a thing an old fist like me would take notice 
of —and if a vessel passed she’d stand and watch it with a look of 
delight, as though nothing more beautiful was ever seen, though it 
might be an old sailing collier, sir, with nothing showing over the 
rail but a red night-cap, or a steam-w'agon after our own pattern. 
But much as she enjoyed the water her presence never gave me 
pleasure. 

“ 1 remember going below on the very night on which the ship 
was lost, and looking at m3' poor lass ns she lay sleeping, and 1 recall 
that the sight of her worried me to a degree you’d scarcely think 
likely. 1 w'as forever wdshing her back liome, snug and secure in 
the litt'e house that she alwav's had ready and bright and cheerful 
lor me to return to. You might almost think such wishes unnatu- 
ral, but 1 see them in their proper light now, and reckon there’s a 
world of truth in that old sayiug about coming events casting their 
shadows before them. It was a Tuesday afternoon. The weather 
had changed in the forenoon, and at mid-da}’’ it was blowing a 
strong breeze from the north-west. It had grown as cold as January', 
and now and again when a squall drove up there’d come a shower 
of hail that was like heaving a bucket of shot on to the decks. 1 had 
kept the patent log towing astern, our course being a trifle to the 
north of east, and on hauling it in at noon 1 found that we had mad • 
about a hundred and seventy' miles run since quitting our port. There 


82 


ROUXD THE GALLEY EIRE. 


were no sights to be got, for, though the morning had opened tine, 
the sky was now as thick as mud. 

“ All this time the wind was freshening up into a gale. 1 put the 
log over again, keeping the vessel on the same course, under sail, and 
her engines going full ahead. The wind was well abaft the beam, 
the sea a following one, and there was nothing to stop the ship; she 
drove along handsomely, whitening the water all around her, and 
for a couple of miles astern, and making excellent sport for my 
wife, who stood holding on and taking in the scene with her eyes 
like diamonds, and her cheeks like roses. 1 never could have sup- 
posed that there was so much to admire in the sea as she had found. 
To me it was hardly much more than a waste of salt-water that 
was to be crossed as soon as possible, full of hard work, exposure, 
poor pav, and heavy anxiety. My poor lass knew nothing of that 
part of it, except the pay. 1 think, had time been given her, and 
we’d been making a long voyage, she’d have converted me into a 
kind of poet, and taught me to see beauties even in thick weather 
and strong head-seas. 

“Well, sir, by this time there was thick weather enough. It 
was three o’cloek, a gale of wind on the quarter, the sea out of sight 
half a mile ahead, lost in a haze of rain, and the steamer pitching 
heavily as she swung over the stormy tumble. Nothing c-ould have 
been more annoying than the thick weather: the ga/e was good, the 
sea did no harm; we were getting an extra two knots out of the 
ship; but the haze was like your being in a hurry, mounted on a 
swift horse, with your eyes blindfolded. However, 1 was deter- 
mined not to slow down. Dispatch is everything nowadays. It is 
all very well to talk of risk, but if a man’s situation depends upon 
his pleasing his owners by being sharp, sharp he must be, and take 
the odds as they come. Better lose a ship and let theowners touch the 
insurance than make a losing venture by tardy delivery. So, as sailors 
say, we ‘ held on all,’ keeping the canvas aloft and tiring up below, 
and racing through the smother iu proper modern fashion. Darker and 
darker it grew, and the wind came along more fiercely. My poor lass 
was frightened, and came up to me and asked w^hat made me rush tlie 
ship when scarcely her own length was visible. 1 said we couldn’t 
stop the vessel; the wind was after her, and she was bound to go. 
‘ But you may run into another ship,’ said she, and not know she is 
there until you have struck her.’ ‘ Ah, Polly,' said 1, ‘ that sort of 
calculation belongs to a past aj]e. Certificates would be of no use 
it they were based on such reckoning. All that we skippers have 
to do is to drive on. If there were to be any trouble over a tardy 
delivery, do you suppose this thick weather would be taEen as an 
excuse? Olliers who left, perhaps, after w^e did, will have arrived 
before us; and the luck of one is expected to be the luck of the 
others.’ 

“ It stormed up harder after nightfall, and w^as then as dark as 
a vault. 1 was on deck from etght till twelve, going into the 
ehart-house occasionally, but never into the cabin, and at midnight 
1 hauled the log in, and found we had run about one hundred and 
twenty miles since noon. Tlie course, east by north half north, seemed 
to me correct. It was as 1 always steered on this run, and so I held on, 
putting the log overboard again; and 1 w^as going below for a miu- 


ROUJS'D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


83 


ute to see after my wife, when (here was a noise like the explosion 
ot a gun forward, and some one sung out that the fore trysail had 
blowu away. This was a small matter, but it was good as a hint. 
We took in the other canvas, and went rolling and pitching along 
under steam, averaging about seven knots, but shipping a good deal 
of water forward, which washed aboutthedecks and made walking 
difficult and uncomfortable. At four bells in the middle watch 1 went 
below to get some rest, leaving the chief mate in charge. Every- 
thing was right,as I supposed ; a hand on the lookout on tlie forecastle, 
plenty of water under and around us, and nothing to cause anxiety 
but the haze. My wife was sound asleep. 1 lay down, completely 
dressed, on a locker, but could get no rest. This was unusual; a 
sailor they sa}’' can sleep anywhere, and amid any sort of disturb 
ance; and 1, lor one, in former days, have been able to sleep when 
it was impossible to hear a voice calling the watch in consequence 
of tlie shrieking of the storm on deck, and the groaning of the ves- 
sel below, 

“ 1 had a foreboding, an uneasiness in my mind ; there was noth- 
ing to account for it, but it kept me awake, and presently it found 
me standing looking at my wife, wishing her to wake up that she 
might talk to me, yet unwilling to arouse her. At that moment the 
ship struck— I felt the grind on her forefoot along the stony bot- 
tom; she heeled over, with the engines working their hardest, and 1 
knew that she had come to a dead stop, not only by the manner in 
which I was thrown forward, but by the thunder of the seas break- 
ing over her decks. 1 rushed up and heard (he men shouting. It 
was still very thick, hailing and raining in torrents. I sung out 
tor the mate, and he came to me and 1 told him to get the wheel 
put hard aport while 1 bawled down to the engine-room to keep the 
engines going. 

No attention was paid to this, for the engineers, firemen, and 
the others, thiukins (he vessel was going down, swarmed up on 
deck, and without heedino: my commands, turned-to to help the rest 
of the crew to get the boats over. My notion was that all hands meant 
to abandon the ship, ami would leave my wife and me to our fate if 
we did not bear a hand to join them; so 1 ran below, and found my 
poor lass dressing herself and in a terrible fright. 1 did not wait 
to answer her questions, but, catcbinsr her by the band, ran on deck 
■wu'th her. Great Heaven what a uigbti what weather! what a scene 
for any poor girl to be dragged into! 1 heard the cries of men 
along-side, and understood by that that one ot the boats had been 
stove and the men in her thrown out. 1 shouted, ‘ Here is my wife, 
men; for God’s sake, take her with you if you intend to abaudon 
the ship!’ The chief-engineer answered, ‘ iBring her here— there’s 
room in the starboard life-boat.’ 1 ran with her to the side, and, 
looking over, saw the boat with seven oreight men in her. 1 called 
to the men to look out, and 1 then put her over, giving her a kiss 
as 1 did so, and bidding her have no fear; and the men caught her, 
and sung out to me to let go the painter. 1 answered no, it would 
be better to let the boat veer astern and ride there while 1 endeav- 
ored to find out the condition of the ship, and they agreeing, I 
carried the end of the painter alt and made it fast, 

“ 1 now called to such as remained on board to join me, but only 


KOUXD THE GALLEY LIKE. 


b-1 

three men came, among them my two mates; all the others had got 
away, were drowned, or were in the boat with my wife. We could 
do nothing till daylight came, and sat crouching out of the reach of 
the water that was flying in heavy masses over the ship. It was as 
much as 1 could do to see the boat astern ; but every now and again 
I’d crawl aft to notice if she still lived, and then come back again 
to the others, thankful to the Almighty that she was making good 
weather of it, and might still save my lass’s life. But how am 1 to 
describe my feelings as 1 reflected upon what she was suffering in 
that open boat, pelted with the hail and rain, the deadly cold wind 
penetrating her poor body, tossed like a nutshell upon the roaring 
seas, and never knowing but that the next moment would find her 
struggling in the water. 

“ Well, sir, the daylight came, and showed us that we were hard 
and fast upon a dangerous reef off the Jutland coast. We could see 
the land there looming upon the haze about four or five miles off. 
The ship was full of water, and bound to go to pieces, though she 
was still holding well together in spite of the terrible pounding of 
the sea. 1 went to the stei’ri to hail the boat and say a word of com- 
fort to m}’’ wife, and when the men saw me they sung out, ‘ Let go 
the painter, captain. We must lake our chance of driving ashore; 
it’s killing work here,’ My wife put out her arms to me, and I 
heard her cry, ‘ Oh, don't leave him behind!’- The boat had already 
as many as she could well carry. Perhaps the men feared that I 
W'ould try to join mj’’ wife, and drag the boat along-side, which 
might end in sinking her; but 1 had no thought of that kind, the 
gig still remaining; and was about to tell them to hold on and keep 
the shelter of the wreck for a spell, as the weather might moderate 
presently, when a man in the bows cut the painter. 

“ A heavy sea taking the boat as he did this, swung her up and 
nroiind; she plunged into the hollow^ and the Avaler rolling between 
prevented me from seeing her. But as it passed it hove up the boat 
again bottom up, the black keel just showing among a smother of 
foam, with here and there the upright arms of a drowning man. 
It was a done in a moment — it was all over in a moment; it left me 
staring like a man struck dead by lighlning, and holding the posture 
he was killed in. The chief mate, catching me by the arm, cried 
out, ‘ She’s going to pieces, sir. For Heaven’s sake, let’s get away! 
We’re doomed men if we linger!’ 1 broke from the horror and grief 
in me, and went to work, not so much to save ray own life as to 
help the others to save theirs. 

“ Had 1 been alone, I should have thrown myself down and waited 
for death. The shock I had sustained had driven all instincts of life 
out of me. Well, sir, we got the gig overboard, and that we were 
saved you may suppose, as I am here to tell the story. Four other 
men got ashore besides us, making ten of the crew drowned besides 
my lass. Oh, sir!” cried the poor fellow, covering his face and 
speaking amid convulsive sobs, “ why did she insist upon accom- 
pauving me! Why did she not keep to our little home ashore, and 
be there to cheer and comfort me w’hen 1 came back from this ship- 
wreck a ruined man! My certificate has been suspended— I cannot 
get a berth— and 1 have lost the darling of my heart, the truest wdfe 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


85 


^hat ever man liad. Why did she insist! why did she insist!” he 
•repeated; and, risinir like a blind man, he left me speechless, in the 
face of a t^rief it was notin the power of human sympathy to sotten. 


SEA SONGS. 

Co:ni?idering that Great Britain is an island, that immense num- 
bers ot the inhabitants live in seaports, that the sea is within an hour 
or two of the metropolis, that there is always an abundance of sail- 
ors “ knocking about ” ashore, and that pretty nearly all our wealth 
as a nation is owing to our seamen and our shipping, it must be 
owned that many of those notions of Jack and his life ashore and at 
sea which may be found amomj the greatest maritime people on the 
face of the earth are in the highest degree extraordinary. Is it pos- 
sible that the sailor is still supposed to have nothing to do at sea but 
to sit down with a pipe in his mouth and let the wind blow him 
along? Are there people yet lining who imagine that on Saturday 
nights at sea cans ot grog are handed about, roaring nautical songs 
sung, and wives and sweethearts toasted? Is it, even in this day of 
steamboats, believed that a sailor cannot express himself without 
loading his language with marine terms; that he cannot speak of 
” walking,” but of “steering;” that the right-hand side ashore is 
the “ starboard;” and that he cannuot step backward without mak- 
ing “ sternway?” 

Where do these highly nautical fellows live when they are at 
home? I never have the luck to come across them. In some sea- 
ports you may still see here and there, over a public-house, the sign 
ot the Jolly Tar; a figure in flowing breaches, tarpaulin hat on 
“ nine hairs,” a bottle of grog in one hand, and a great red nose, 
set in the midst of a shining face. Who was the original of that 
fellow? He is not a man-of-war’s man, and most certainly he is not 
a merchantman. 1 take it that he is nothing more nor less than the 
embodiment of the landsman’s notion of the sailor obtained to a 
large extent from marine novels, but mainly from the English sea 
songs. You might walk the whole of Great Britain over without 
meeting with the counterpart of that effigy, unless it lay in some 
turnpike impostor who gets a living by swearing he has been ship- 
w^recked. If the merchant seaman is to be typified, he must not be 
dressed in loose breeches and an open-breasted shirt. If his language 
is to be imitated, it must not altogether consist of “ hard a lee ” and 
“ haul the bowline.” And if his life at sea is to be pictured, one 
must drop ail reference to cans of grog, and have nothing whatever 
to say about Saturday nights and sweethearts and wives. 

But how can landsmen be ridiculed for their absurd ideas of the 
sailor when for years and years writers who profess to know all 
about him have persisted fu reproducing the same stereotyped like- 
ness — the same drunken, singing, good-humored, sprawling mounte- 
bank, shouting out for more grog, bawling inane verses about his 
Poll and his Sue, clamoring the purest “slush” about the Union 
Jack, and talking inconceivable nonsense about top-gallants and 
handspikes? Of course the likeness is accepted by those who know 
no better, and songs are sung about Jack which no sailor can listeq 


86 BOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 

to without astonishment that ignorance so profound should he also 
so widespread. 1 remember a man, who was much applauded in 
his day as a singer of nautical ballads, saying to me, “ To-morrow 1 
have to sing ‘ Tom Tough,’ by desire. Can you tell me, sir, what 
attitude 1 ought to adopt when 1 come to— 

“ ‘ So I seiz’d the capstan bar, 

Like a true, honest tar, 

And in spite of tears and sighs 
Sung yo ! heave ho?’ 

Do I pull or do 1 push, sir?” 

What did it matter? W hether he pulled or whether he pushed would 
have been all the same to his audience. Who but a sailor at a con- 
cert would notice that a vocalist thought it all right when he roared 
out— 

“ And at the bosun’s call 
We man the poop downhaul, 

And furl the main jib-boom, lads, 

So, boys, so?” 

Apparently, let the words employed be as nonsensical as they will, 
so long as there is plenty of ” yohoing ” and “ heaving ” and “ so- 
hoing,” the song is accepted as extremely nautical, and peculiarly 
expressive of the free and open character ot the sailor. 

1 was once in a house much frequented by seamen when there en- 
tered the room in which I was sitting an elderly man of a somejvhat 
sour cast of countenance dressed— not, believe me, in that flowing 
rig in which all kinds of sailors are popularly supposed to go clad, 
but in plain black cloth and an unstarched, striped cotton shirt, with 
a cravat round a stand-up collar. He had the look of a man who 
had been at sea all his life, and consequently no marine exterior 
could be less suggestive than his of “ So ho’s,” and “ Heave-ho’s,” 
and “ Pull aways.” He called for half a pint of ale, and filled his 
pipe, and sat smoking, and listening to a conversation between two 
men relative to a collision in which the vessel they had recently left 
was concerned. By and by he began to grope in his pockets, and 
presently produced some sheets of songs, which he held out at 
arm’s-length the better to inspect the highly marine figure who, in 
sailor’s shirt and jacket, straggled legs, immense belt, and lifted 
hand, embellished the title-page of the cheap collection. He took a 
long look at this striking figure, frequently removing his pipe to 
expectorate, and then very leisurely began to examine the songs. 

1 saw by the movements of his lips that he read little bits here 
and there, and now and again I w'ould catch him stealing a glance 
at me, as though he had something on his mind, but was too shy to 
address me. 

“What have you there?” said I. 

“ Why,” he answered, reverting to the title page, “ something I 
paid a penny for just now— bought it from a chap who stood along- 
side B row of ’em fixed against a wall. They call it the * ISea Songs 
of Great Britain.’ It’s full of queer spelling, and it’s all about 
Jack, whoever he may be, if this b’ent him,” and he pointed to the 
absurd straddling woodcut. 

He went on reading for a short lime, his pipe in his hand, and his 


KOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 87 

mouth opening wider and wiiler until, coming to tlie end of the 
song, he looked at me and said, “ Well, I’m jiggered!” 

“ What’s the matter?” I inquireii. 

“ Dibdin — Dibdin!” said he ” d’ye know anything of that gent, 
sir?” 

“ Only as the greatest nautical song- writer this country ever pro- 
duced,” I replied. 

‘‘ Yes,” said he, casting his eyes upon the page, ” 1 see he is a 
nautical song- writer; but was he ever at sea?” 

” Not as a sailor, 1 believe.” 

“ Mates,” he called' out to the others, who had stopped talking 
and were listening to his questions, ” what d’ye think of this for a 
nautical job? It’s called ‘ My Poll and my Partner Joe;' ” and he 
read slowly and hoarsely — 

“ ‘ I did my duty manfully while on the billows rolling; 

And night or day could find the way, 

Blindfold, to the main-top-bowling.’ ” 

He paused and looked around him. 

” ‘ Blindfold to the main-top-bowling!’ ” he ejaculated. “ Which 
end of it, d’ye reckon, mates? Would he come down the bolt rope 
to the bridle? That must have been it, otherwise what iranfulness 
would he have had occasion to talk about? But listen to this, boys 
— evidently the work of another nautical man. It’s called ‘ The 
Storm.’ 

“ ‘ Now it freshens, set the braces ; 

Quick, the top-sail sheets let go ! 

Luff, boys, luff; don’t make wry faces! 

Up your top sails nimbly clew !’ 

* Set the braces!’ How’s that job done, d’ye Know? And when they 
was told to ‘ Lutf, boys, luft,’ did they let go of the wheel to ‘ Up 
their top-sails nimbly clew?’ It must have been a bad storm, that, 
1 wonder they didn’t ship a capstan bar in a lee scupper-hole to 
keep the ship upright.” 

“ You mustn’t be too critical.” said I; “ it’s the music of those 
old songs that makes them beautiful,” 

” I’ve got notheu to do with the music,” he said, warmly. ” It’s 
the words I’m looking at. What’s the music got to do with the 
sense? See here!” he cried. “What’s the name of it? oh! ‘The 
Boatswain Calls,’ ” and he read— 

“ ‘ Come, my boys, your handspikes poise, 

And give one general huzza, 

Yet sighing as you pull away 
For the tears ashore that flow, 

To the windlass let us go. 

With yo ! heave-ho !’ ” 

He let fall the paper on his knee and stared at me. 

“ Well, that is certainly very poor stuff,” said I. 

“ Poor stuff!” he exclaimed. “ Why, it ain’t even that. Ne’er 
an omnibus driver but could do better How can they pull away if 
they’ve got their handspikes poised? and what’s the windlass got to 
do with pulling away? And hear this— 

“ ‘ If 'tis storm, why we bustle ; if calm, why we boozev 
All taut from the stem to the stern.’ 


88 


ROUITD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


Booze in a calm! Why, there’s naught eoing but liquor in these 
blooming rhymes. And ‘ All taut from Ihe stem to (he stern ’ — 
did the chap who wrote that liave the least glimmerin’ shadder of a 
notion of what he meant? But stop a bit; here’s a song called 
‘ Poor Jack:’ 

“ ‘ Though the tempests top-gallant masts smack-smooth should smite, - 
And shiver each splinter of wood, 

Clear the decks, stow the yards, and house everything tight, 

And under the foresail we scud,’ 

What d’ye think of that, boys?” said he, addressing the others, 
who were on the broad grin. ” Did ye ever hear of a top-gallant, 
mast going smack-smooth? One lives and lafns. I always thought 
that was a job for the lower masts. And, I say, how d’ye relish 
stowing the yards? He can’t mean atop of the booms, for he keeps 
the foresail on her to scud with; but perhaps the foreyard’s stowed 
too, and the reefed course is set on the flying jib-stay. But follow 
this: 

“ ‘ For,’ says he, ‘ d’ye mind ye, let . . . 

—something; here’s a word left out — 

“ ‘ . . . ’ere so oft 

Take the top-lifts of sailors aback !’ 

Does he mean topping-lift? If so, that’s a queer sort of thing tfo be 
taken aback. Why, if he goes on in this fashion he’ll be reefing 
the mainsheet next.” 

All this was exceedingly amusine to me. It was too good, iii- 
deed, not to encourage. 

‘‘Nautical blunders seem uncommonly cheap,” I said. “You 
appear to have got a wonderful lot for one penny.” 

‘‘ Look here,” he cried, bursting into a laugh as his eye lighted on: 
another ballad; 

“ ‘ ’Twas in the good ship Rover ’— 
that’s the name of it— 

“ ‘ That time bound straight to Portugal-. 

Right fore and aft we bore ; 

But when we made Cape OrtugaJ 
A gale blew off the shore. 

“ ‘ She la3’, it did so shock her, 

A log upon the main,’ 

Till, sav’d from Davy's locker. 

We put to sea again.’ ” 

Only a Harley or a Robson could do justice to the seaman’s face 
as he looked at me after putting down the paper: there is nothing 
in words to convey the sour astonishment and contempt in his ex- 
pression. 

“ ‘ Right fore and aft we borel’ ” he presently exclaimed. ” Did 
any man ever hear the like of that? What sort of course is it? 
How’s her head when she’s bearing right fore and aft? And then 
think, arter lying like a log upon the main, of putting to sea again, 
without going into harbor first!” 


HOUXD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


89 


“ I doubt if ye can beat that/’ said one of the other sailors. 

“ Think not?” answered the old fellow, quickly, ” then what 
d’ye say to this out of a song here wrote down as ‘ Spanking 
Jack?’ 

“ ‘ One niprht, as we drove with two reefs in the main-sail, 

And the scud came on lowering upon a lee shore, 

Jack went up aloft to hand the top-gallant sail, 

A spray washed him off, and we ne’er saw him more.’ ” 

” What is wrong there?” I asked. 

” Wrong!” he shouted. Did ye ever hear of a square main-sail 
with two reefs in it? and a square one’s meant, if anything is meant 
at all, by the hallusion in the verse to the top-gallant sail. And 
what’s intended by the scud coming on lowering upon a lee shore? 
Scud comes from windward, don’t it? And w’hafs a spray?” 

” Quite enough water to washotf such a sailor as Spanking Jack, 
I dare say,” I remarked. 

” Ay, you’re right,” said he, with a grin. ” But I’m not done 
yet. Here’s something in the ferocious line, called ‘ The Demon of 
Ihe Sea:’ 

* With equal rage both ships engage. 

And dreadful slaughter’s seen ; 

The die is cast— a ball at last 
Has struck his magazine. 

‘ And now appall’d, his men they all 
Stand mute in deep despair ; 

The pirate, too, and all his crew 
Were blown up in the air.” 

What d’ye think of that tor a nautical bust-up? Think of stand- 
ing in mute despair after the ball had struck the magazinel Plow 
long did the chap as wrote this wash reckon it takes powder to ex- 
plode arter it’s fired? Instead of being appalled and standing in 
mute despair they should have taken to the boats: for ye see that 
convenient magazine was bound to give ’em plenty of time. And 
they calls this,” said he, turning ttie pages backward and forward, 
” ‘ Sea Songs.’ It’s the likes of this. that’s ottered to shore-going 
folk as correct representations of the mariner ’fi calling, hey? Ain’t 
it true to life? Ilere’s a bit for ye: 

” ‘ William, who high upon the yard 
Rock’d with the billows to and fro. 

Soon as her well-known voice he heard, 

He sigh’d and cast his eyes below. 

The cords glide swiftly through his glowing hands, 

And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.’ 

What sort of cords did he come dowm by— the signal-halyards? 
And isn’t it quite conceivable that, being on a man-o’-war, and 
aloft on duty, he should drop his job to come down to his iSusan 
without leave of the officer- in charge? Wonderfully true to life, 
sir, ain’t it, especially them hits about the sailor-boy capering ashore, 
and jolh tars drinking anddancinir at sea, as if cargoes consisted of 
nothing but casks of rum which sailors are allowed to broaeh when- 
nsver they want to be inerry?” 

He turned to the rude woodcut, and had another long look at it; 


90 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


tlien suddenly twisting the sheets up in his hand he thrust one end 
into the fire, singing out, as he loo^ied around him, 

“ Anybody want a light?” 

This sour seaman was, of course, a very hard and exacting 
critic, belonging to a class of sailors who, when reading about the 
sea, should they come across the least oversight on the part of a 
writer, will fling bis book or poem or song out of window, and vote 
the author a lubber and utterly ignorant of all that concerns the 
calling. I remember, when I wrote an account of the wreck of 
the Indian Chief, a sailor gravely told me he was cock-sure the 
whole yarn was an out-and-out lie, because 1 had made tlie chief 
mate escape from the mizzen-mast by getting into the main -top by 
the mizzen top-magt stay. No doubt I should have done better by 
sending the mate to make his way into the lop from- the lop-gal- 
lant-mast-head; but just because my sailor was sure that the miz- 
zen-top-mast stay of the Indian Chief set up half-way down the 
mainmast, he refused to believe the-story of the wreck. Yet it is 
quite possible to read many of our English sea songs with wonder 
and ridicule without necessarily bringing to them the sourness and 
severity of judgment 1 found in the old seaman. The present gen- 
eration of writers are not worse sinners in respect to accuracy than 
the past; but I am bound to say that their blunders are to the full 
as numerous. The production of a sea song is by no means conditional 
on a man’s having been to sea. The finest marine lyric in this or 
any other language, ” Ye Mariners of England,” was written by a 
man who had no knowledge whatever of the sailor’s calling. There 
is nothing false in that glorious poem, no absurd references to bow- 
lines and top-sail sheets, and other words of which few landsmen 
have the least idea of the meaning. But can as much be said of 
Allan Cunningham’s popular poem, ‘‘A Wet Sheet and a Flowing 
Sea?” It is just possible that the poet may have used the word 
” sheet ” rightly, and meaut the song to refer to a small fore-and-aft 
vessel that when heavily pressed down might wet her sheets; but 
Jack, when he hears that ballad, is strongly disposed to believe that 
the writer thought that a ” sheet” was a sail, and this being his sus- 
picion, he could never sing the song with the least relish or enjoy- 
ment of even the beautiful air with which the words are associated. 
By all means let landsmen continue to vrrite sea songs; but it they 
desire a larger audience than shore-goers for their compositions— if 
they wish to hear of their verses in the forecastle, and learn that 
they are popular among sailors — let them rigorously avoid all tech- 
nicalities, all the stupid old clap-trap about cans of grog and ” Yeo, 
heave-ho,” and “So-ho!” and the like. For a sonir may be as salt 
as the sea itself and yet be free from the stereotyped nautical- 
isms as a page of ” Hamlet.” Indeed, the real English sailor is not. 
one third as nautical as he is supposed to be; and the numerous in- 
anities dedicated to his rollicking enjoyment when at sea, his Sues 
and Nans ashore, are about as true to liis real character a.s the pub- 
lic-house eflBgy of him, on one leg, in shoes, and round hat at the: 
back of his head, is like the original. 


ROUKD THE GALLEY EIRE. 


91 


ARBOURS BOW. 

There is not a more painfully (iivertin«; sisht in the whole world 
than that of a Cockney with a face as yellow as a London fog, a 
tall hat at the back of his head, his colored shirt-sleeves rolled 
above his elbows, tugging upon the sea at a small pair of oars in a 
rather heavy wherry. He has no idea of tides, of w’aves, of winds, 
or weather. He looks to leeward for squalls, and over the stern 
for any other news of the sea. The current that dangerously and 
helplessly sweeps him away from tlie land delights him by a sense 
of velocity. The waves wdiich rise and threaten to fill the boat 
gladden him with the sensation of going “ up and down.” 1 once 
took the trouble to watch a Cockney get into a wherry and row 
himself out to sea. I kept a very powerful glass bearing upon him, 
and had his face within reach of my hand, so to speak, when he 
was two miles off. There was a strong tide setting to the eastward, 
in which direction lay the North Sea. He went away very fast, 
and with mye\eto the telescope 1 found myself smiling in sym- 
pathy with his radiant enioyment of the speed at which his boat 
was going. He did not feather his oars, but rowed with prodigious 
contortions of his body, carrying his nose aft until 1 tliought he 
would tumble upon it in tlie stern-sheets, and then lying back at 
an angle so acute that I was constant ly watching tor his heels, 
while his oars flourished themselves in the air like a pair of t-ongs 
in the hands of a clown. 1 was sure, by the expression in his face, 
that he believed it was his fine rawing that made the boat go so 
fast. He did not know that the tide was helping him at the rate 
of very nearly three and a half land miles an hour. 

At last he thought it was time to turn back. He let go one oar to 
pull at the other with both hands, and so he got his boat’s head 
round. He still smiled and looked confident, and rowed uninter- 
■miltently for about ten minutes, in which time he had gone astern 
about the sixteenth of a mile. Then he stopped and look a look 
over the bows. His face was no longer radiant, but on the con- 
trary, very much puzzled, and even slightly distressed. He rowed 
hard again, and then stopped and took another look. This time he 
seemed horribly frightened. Indeed, examined through the tele- 
scope, his yellow face was a curious study. The emotions of his 
soul were finely expressed, and every time he stopped rowing to 
turn his head and gaze at the land, a fresh passion w’as depictured 
on his fog-colored lineaments. Eventually a couple of boatmen 
went to succor him, and with much difficulty towed him home. 
He stepped on shore very defiantly, and, instead of rewarding the 
boatmen for their services, expressed his gratitude by offering to 
row either of them for a pound. 

It is plain that hardy and dexterous landsmen of this kind must 
occasionally meet with exciting adventures on the deep. An ex- 
perience not so commonplace but that another touch or two would 
have raised it into tragical dignity w as encountered not very many 


92 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


days a.o:o by a plain, honest, clecently-eclucatecl Londoner, a CitF 
clerk, aged forty-four, who, being afflicted with the delusion that 
lie could row, put forth in a wherry along with his wife and child. 
He told me the stoiy, begging me to print it as a warning to others, 
but at the same time on \io account to mention his name, nor the 
port at which he embarked on his disastrous voyage. As nearly as 
1 can remember, this is how liis story went. 

“ I don’t know," he began, “ whetlier I shall ever live to keep a 
servant, but it would be more sensible for me to hope 1 may never 
live to feel the want of one. Anj’^way, when a man can’t afford to 
keep a servant, then, if lie has a baby it must always go along with 
the wife: and this being so, when I offered to lake my wife out for 
an hour’s row we were bound to carry the bab}^ with us. The 
baby was weaned six weeks ago. It’s a small thing to say, but 
worth taking notice of, as it made our troubles harder, as you’ll 
hear. 1 never professed to be an oarsman. I had in ray time pulled 
a pair of sculls on the Thames, and got along middling well— well 
enough to enable me to say to my wife, on this occasion, ‘ Look, 
here, iSarah, there’s no need to take a man. A man will be a shil- 
ling extra. 1 don’t say I can feather; and I don’t know, if I were 
to row with other men, whether I should be able to keep time. But 
I’m quite competent to pull in a boat by myself.’ 

" ‘ Very well, William,’ said she; ■' if you think there’s no dan- 
ger, an hour on the water will be very enjoyable. But we don’t 
want more than an hour.’ ’’ 

" ‘ Certainly not,’ 1 answered; ‘ an hour is eighteenpence. ’ ’’ 

" The baby was dressed and fed, my wife put on her hat, and we 
left our lodgings for the place where the wherries lay. As we went 
along my wife suggested that we should carry a few buns with us. 

" ‘ What for?’ said I; ‘ we shall he back for tea, AVe’re sure to 
eat the buns, and the}"’!! destroy our appetite for the shrimps. That 
was my reasoning. It was very short-sighted; but what should a 
man who is cooped up in the City of London for eleven months in 
every year know about the sea, and how to provide against its dan- 
gers? 

" We w«re pursued by four or five boatmen to the landing-stage,, 
where I selected what looked to me a nice light wherry. It was 
five o’clock in the afternoon. We meant to be home by six. The 
sun was still very hot; but the boatmen who helped »is to get into 
the wherry said we should find a cool air on the sea. I removed 
my coat and waistcoat, and turned up my arm -sleeves and set my 
hat securely on my head. My wife sat upon a cushion in the hinder- 
part of the boat, and the boatman put on the rudder and told my 
wife to lay hold of the strings — I don’t know what sailors call them. 
But she said she would rather not touch them, as she had no idea, 
of steering, and besides, the baby kept her hands employed. 

" ‘ I can steer,’ said I, ‘ with my oars.' 

" On this an old man with a long stick with a hook at the end of 
it pushed the boat off. ^ There was quite a crowd of other boats — 
empty boats— in the way, and I was a good deal confused by the 
shouts of the boatmen telling me what to do. We ran into several 
of these boats and twice I let one of the oars fall overboard, which 
gave me a great deal of trouble to recover. We got clear of theser 


HOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


boats, and I was rowing pretty steadily when, to my surprise, I 
found the boat’s head turning and aiming for the pier. 1 endeav- 
ored to remedy this by rowing more strongly with one oar than with 
the other, but the wherry would insist upon going the wrong way,, 
and 1 had come to the conclusion that there was something se- 
riously amiss with the boat, and was about to put back and ex- 
change it for anotlier that would go straight, when 1 perceived 
that the rudder was inclined, in consequence of my wife sitting ou 
one of the strings connected with it, 

“ When this was freed the boat went straight, and I pulled vigor- 
ously for the open sea. We had several alarms, however, betoro 
reaching the open water. First, there were three boats full of school- 
boys, splashing about with their oars, who kept on screeching to 
me to mind where I was going. Then a man on the pier roared 
to me to keep clear of the tug. Then, again, we were .nearly rua 
down b}’' a smack. 

“ ‘ 1 certainly don’t call this enjoyment,’ said my wife faintly,, 
striving to soothe the baby, who had been awakened by the boys,, 
and was crying at the top of her voice. 

“ 1 made no answer, but continued rowing with great resolution, 
and, as 1 flattered myself, with a dash of science too, all things 
considered, earnestly looking over my shoulders to see where I was 
going, until my neck w'as as stiff as an ofRce-ruler, At last we got 
out of harbor into the open sea. 

“ There was a large steamboat arriving from some place or other 
there were numbers of people on the pier, but all watching the 
steamboat and thinking about her, and so nobody took the least 
notice of us. The water was quiet, with what nautical men call a 
swell that lifted and sank us; there was a nice wind that cooled the 
air. 1 saw two or three wherries at anchor in the opposite direction 
to that I was rowing in, and I fancy the people in them were fish- 
ing. Very far out at sea were some ships, but the only vessel near 
the harbor was a smack that came out soon after us, and, filling her 
sails, pushed quickly past us. One of the men upon her called out 
sometliing as the vessel went by, but I didn’t catch what he said. 

“ My wife now agreed with me that this was real happiness. 
There was a delightful quiet in the air, to enjoy which a man must 
live for eleven months every year in the bustle and noise of theCity; 
the town looked beautiful in the afternoon light, the tops of the 
white cliffs as green as new silk, and over and over again, after 
rowing a few moments, I would hang on my oars and look at the 
houses in the distance and the different objects changing their 
shapes or shifting their places. As 1 had pulled the oars very 
leisurely indeed, I calculated that it would not take me more than 
a quarter of an hour of steady pulling to cover the distance I had been 
easil 3 ' traversing; 1 mean, I reckoned that I could cover in a quarter 
of an hour the distance 1 had slowly come in three-quarters. That, 
would make the hour; but my wife was enjoying the air and the sea so 
thoroughly that 1 thought it would not greatly matter if we broke^ 
into another hour. This war a treat we didn’t often get. My wife 
flattered me by saying I rowed very well, and made the boat go 
wonderfully quick, considering I put very little strength into the- 
oars. 1 thought so loo, indeed, and was surprised to observe how: 


94 


ROUJSTD THE GALLEY FIRE, 


rapidly, in proportion to my exertion, the land had receded away 
from us. By this time the pier was only a black line upon the water, 
and the people upon it invisible. 

“ ‘ You’ll be facing the shore, Sarah,” said 1, ‘ when I turn the 
boat to row back, and you’ll be much interested in seeing the vari- 
ous objects growing bigger and bigger as we approach the land.’ 

“ ‘ No wonder people are fond of the water,’ said she; ‘ 1 could 
stop here for weeks. ’ 

“ Poor woman! 1 doubt if she’d say that now. 

” It was six o’clock when I turned the boat’s head. I never 
doubted that 1 could row back in twenty minutes, and reckoned 
that the extra half hour would be well worth the money. I rowed 
at first with a good deal of energy, and my wife was delighted at 
the manner in which I made the foam fly with my oars. Indeed, I 
worked too hard; the exertion soon tired me, and I perspired at 
every pore with the heat. It was slightly distracting that the baby, 
who had been sleeping very quietly, should now wake up and cry 
for what I suppose you might call her tea, if you can give regular 
names to milk-and-water administered about seven times a day. 

” ‘ I am sorry, William,’ said my wife, ‘ that we have slopped 
longer than the hour.’ 

“ ‘ Oh,’ said I, knowing that the child was running in her head, 

^ baby will do very well untif we get home; we sha’n’t be long 
now;’ and again I exerted my strength and toiled like a champion 
rower. 

“ ‘ It’s very curious,” said I, giving up after about ten minutes, 
and feeling quite exhausted, and panting for breath. 

“ ‘ What’s very curious?’ said my wife. 

‘ Why,’ said I, ptilling out my watch, ‘ here it is twenty min- 
utes past six, and tfie land seems rather further off than it was be- 
fore 1 turned the boat’s head toward it.” 

“ ‘ Yes,” saidshe, growing a little pale; ‘ I’ve been noticing that, 
too.” 

” ‘Perhaps it wants a steadier stroke,’ said I, wiping my fore- 
head; and, settling to the oars again, I rowed for another ten min- 
utes, and then looked over my shoulder. 1 coulil not be deceived, 
ilow as 1 would, I not only could make no way, but the boat actu- 
ally lost ground. I could not conceive of a current in the sea: a tide 
was an intelligible thing to me in a river, but I could not realize that 
the great body of water we were floating on was moving in a con- 
trary direction to the land. There was nothing about to give me 
the idea; no bouys, or anything of that kind. All that I understood 
was that the harder 1 rowed toward the land the further we fell 
away from it. I was heartily frightened, and pulled in the oars to 
stand up and look around me. M}' wife began to cry. and the baby 
roared as babies can when they are particularly wanted to keep 
quiet. There were some ships, as I have said, a long distance off; 
and there was the smack that had passed us, two or three miles 
distant; but there was nothing near us. *1 put my hands to my 
mouth and shouted toward the land as hard as ever I could, flatter- 
ing myself that there was a faint chance of the smooth water con- 
veying the sound. I then stood waving and flourishing my hat for 
at least five minutes. 


ROUND THE GALLEY LIRE. 95 

Oh, ’William, what will become of us?’ cried m}’^ wife, sob- 
bing piteously. 

“ I was much too upset to answer her. 1 had hoped that we 
should be noticed by some of the people who keep a lookout on the 
pier; but as the time went by, and the sun sank lower, and 1 
could see no signs of an 3 dhing coming to our rescue, my spirits fell, 
and 1 sat down and stared blankly at my wife. 1 put out the oar& 
again, hut was so wearied that I soon gave up rowing; besides, 1 
felt that we were being carried avv^ay, and that the oars scarcely 
hindered our progress toward the ocean. All this while the baby 
was giving us the greatest trouble with its incessant crying. My 
wife filled up the pause'^ of its screams by anticipating all the hor- 
rors which might befall us. She assured me tliat she could see 
nothing before us but death from starvation, unless the sea should 
rise aad upset the boat and drown us, or unless a passing vessel 
should crash into us when the darkness fell. 'What, could 1 do? 
We weie in one of those situations in which it is simply impossible 
for people to help themselves. 1 could not row; we had no sail,, 
and even if we had had a sail I should not have known how to use 
it; I liad no means of calling attention to our position except by 
waving my hat or flourishinc: an oar, which seemed an idle thing to 
do, considering what a speck the boat made upon the water, and 
how far off we were from everything but the miserable sea. 

“ Sure enough, presently the sun sank, and though the twilight 
lasted a good bit, yet the water soon grew dark, and speedily after 
sundown the coast grew faint, and the ships in the distance were 
swallowed up in the gloom. "When the night fairly came the wind 
got up, not very much, but enough to disturb the water, and the 
wherry began to slop about horribly. What was worse, it blew off 
the land, and helped to carry us further away. How 1 cursed my 
folly for not having brought a man with me! The crying of the 
poor hungry little baby, and my wife’s moans and reproaches, were 
just maddening. It was very fine overhead, the sky full of stars; 
but there was no moon, and the sea looked as black as ink. I could 
see the lights on the land, and could even very faintly hear the 
strains of a band of music playing on the cliff, tor, as I have told 
you, the wind blew from the shore. I pulled out my watch; but 
though ] held it close to my nose I could not see what time it was. 
1 kept on looking around in the hopes of observing a passing vessel, 
l)ut, though no doubt some must have passed, 1 did not see them. 

“ My wife was continually saying, ‘ Oh, William, what shall we 
do?’ 

“ ‘ Do,” said I, ‘ what can we do? We must sit here and wait.’^ 

” ‘ Wait!” she would cry; “ what is there to wait for?” 

” ‘ For daylight, if for nothing else.’ 

‘‘ ‘ But what will dayliaht do for us? We have been lost in day- 
light, and wlien daylight comes where shall we be?’ and here she 
would hug the poor crying baby and wish herself dead, and so on. 

” Lord, what a time it was! The sea kept the boat rocking in- 
ces.sanfly, so that it was impossible for me to stand up. The dew 
fell like rain, and my clothes were as heavy as if I had been ex- 
posed to a shower. My wife said her limbs felt like pieces of iron, 
and that she had the cramp in every joint, which 1 could easily un- 


96 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


derstand, for I, too, suffered atrociously from liavin.o; to keep seated 
iiud to balance myself to the tumbling about of the wrefclnHl little 
wherry. By degrees we lost sight of the lights on shore, and we 
felt as if we were in the middle of the Atlantic. Once or twice 1 
thought of taking to the oars again, but when the lights disappeared 
there was nothing to aim for. How we passed the hours 1 can’t tell 
you. The baby would wake and cry until she cried herself to sleep; 
then wake and cry herself to sleep again, and so on, hour after 
hour. My wife and 1 fell silent; we had exhausted all Widii could 
bn said, and we sat there like two statues. To my dying hour 
I -shall remember the gurgling and sobbing noise of the water splash- 
ing against the boat’s side, and the dreadful silence overhead and 
around, above the water, as I may say, 

“ It must have been past midnight when 1 thought I heard a kind 
■of groaning or rumbling sound in the wind. 1 could not imagine 
what it could be, until, looking-into the darkness on my right hand, 
I spied three lights upon the sea— one green, one red, and one white 
— this last much higher than the others. Soon after there was a 
heavy noise of washing water, and just over the wiiite liarht there 
was a shower of sparks, and presently a great black shadow stood 
up on the sea nnd blotted out the stars behind it, I was w^eak and 
worn-out— terrified to a degree by the swift approach of this 
steamer— and though 1 managed to shout, my voice seemed to stick 
in my throat. The great vessel swept past us not above twenty yards 
distant: saving those lam.ps she was all in darkness, and soon after 
she had gone by I thought the wherry would have upset in the 
'waves the steamer had left behind. My wife screamed as the boat 
sprang up and down, and every instant I expected the sea to rush 
into us. 1 shouted again to the steamer, hoping that 1 might be 
heard. This time my voice carried wmll, but nothing came of it; 
the steamer rushed on, and was soon out of sight. 

“ The dawn was just breaking when I saw a vessel making a black 
mark against the pale-green light in the place where the sun wms 
coming. It took me some time to find out 'which way she was 
going, but presently the rising sun made her plain, and 1 saw that 
she was a small smack, and that she aimed directly for us. I man- 
aged to stand up in the wherry and flourish my hat. There was no 
coast to be seeii—nothing visible upon the sea but that smack. So 
far as water went, we might have been in the middle of the biggest 
ocean in the world. 1 peceived before long that llie smack saw us, 
for she lowereil one of her sails and came along slowly. I looked 
at my wife to see how this adventure had served her, and it seemed 
to me that she had aged twenty years. Her face was hollow, her 
dress draggled and limp with the dew; she was a most melancholy 
object to look at. I hardly knew her, indeed; and she was equally 
astonished by my appearance, as she afterward told me. Who could 
suppose that a night spent in an open boat at sea would work such 
a change in people’s looks? As to poor little baby, she had been 
crying on and off all night, and, being pretty nearly perished with 
hunger, she was a distressing thing truly, for us parents to see. It 
was nearly three-quarters of an hour before the smack came close 
to us, counting from the time 1 had first seen her. A great man in 
yellow clothes bawled out, ‘ What’s that boat, and what do you 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 9! 

Tjrant?’ You might have supposed be would guess our want by ou: 
appearance. 

“ ‘ ^i^e’ve been carried away to sea,’ 1 answered, in a faint voice 
for I felt as weak as an infant, and just fit to cry like one, ‘ and 
we’ve been in this boat all night.’ 

“ ‘ Where do you come from?’ he called. 

“ I told him, and he answered, ‘ We’ll tow you in. Look out for 
the end of the line;’ and another man threw a rope at me. 

“ I caught it, but did not know what to do with it, seeing which 
the first man told me to keep hold, and dragged the wherry up to 
the smack, and then got into her and attached the line to the boat. 

“ ‘ Will you sit here, or come aboard?’ he asked. 

“ ‘ Oh, come aboard, certainly,’ 1 replied; so he took the bab' 
and passed it to a sailor on the smack, and then helped my wife up. 
and then me. 

“ So here we were saved; but faint, broken-down, feeling as it 
we had been dug out of the grave. Luckily, they had a few tins o: 
Swiss milk in the cabin, and so poor little baby got something tc 
eat at last. Also, they gave us some corned-beef and bread, which 
we devoured gratefully, after the manner of shipwrecked people 
The captain of the smack laughed when I told him we had originalL, 
started for an hour’s row. 

“ ‘ How much d* they charge you for an hour?’ says he. 

“ ‘ Eighteen-pence,’ 1 answered. 

“ ‘ You have had a good eighteen-pennorth,' said he. ‘ You may 
thank the Lord, master, that ye’re alive to pay even eighteen-pence. 
D’ye know how many miles you’ve drifted from your port?’ 

“ ‘ No.’ said 1. 

“ ‘ Well, then,’ said he, ‘ you’ve drifted eleven miles. There’s 
the coast — you can calculate for yourself;’ and he pointed to the 
white cliffs, which were visible from the smack’s deck, though not 
from the boat. A fearfully long distance off they looked, to be 
sure. 

“ ‘ William,’ said my wife at this moment, ‘ I’ll never come upon 
the water again.’ 

“ ‘ Nor I, Sarah,’ said I— ‘ at least without a man.’ 

“ ‘ Man or no man,’ said she, ‘ I’ll never venture my life again.’ 

“ And I have no doubt she will keep her word, though it won’t 
cost her a very great effort to do so, for 1 am quite sure I shall neve; 
attempt to make her break it.” 

” And so,” said I, ” .you got home safe?” 

” Yes,” he answered; “ the smack landed us in about two hours. 
The boatman wanted to charge me for twelve hours’ use of his 
wherry; but 1 got off for halt a sovereign, which 1 thought chea]).- 
ns Le talked of having the law of me.” 

And here terminated this middle-aged Cit.y clerk’s narrative. Tl: 
moral of it is not far oft; and may be found without mucli hunt 
ing; and that a little musing over it shall not be without value, an v 
man may judge for himself if he will but take his stand upon < 
British pier and watch the typical sea-side visitor enjoying ” an 
hour’s row.” 


4 


m 


^OUIs^D THE GALLEY FIRE, 


TEE PLEASURES OF YACHTING. 

Steam has played sad havoc with the beauty of our naval and 
luerchant vessels; but, though ithas not spared our pleasure fleets, it 
lias left untouched numerous graceful fabrics among the yachts of 
the country, and sail-power may survive for many years yet in the 
most beautiful form it has ever been molded to by the genius of 
man. There is a story told of a butterfly alighting on the breast of 
a dying girl and taking wing at the very moment she expired, and 
soaring into blue sky with the sunshine sparkling on its bright 
wii.gs. 1 thouglit of this tale the other day when I spied the hulk 
of what appeared to have been a sailing frigate or an old East India 
merchantman towing up Channel. There was a strong, clear wind, 
and the water flashed like a prism; and I was gazing with interest 
at the poor old dismasted hulk when a fine schooner yacht, beating 
to the eastward, swirled up under her stern. A noble sight was 
that pleasure vessel. Pier lee rail was almost flush with the foam 
which swept like a storm of snow under the gleaming milk-white 
curve of her lower cloths; to windward her sheathing was hove high, 
and the yellow metal glittered like new gold as it glanced through 
the net-work of spray and the shining emerald-gren fibers of water 
which leaped about her glossy sides. She mightliave been the very 
spirit of the old dismantled sailing-ship, leaping into bright and 
beautiful being as the most exquisite and the completest expression 
of marine grace. It would have gratified the most morose sailor to 
see her. Here was a sight to comfort Jack for the loss of the noble 
sailing-ships of his younger days. The grand piles of canvas, the 
little skysails topping the swelling pyramids, the magnificent sweep 
of jib-booms bearing their marble-colored cloths in layers like a 
heap of clouds, the ringing minstrelsy of the wind among the taut 
hemp that resembles a spider’s web as you look at it against the 
sky ot the horizon — these things are gone, or fast going; the ocean 
will soon be bare of them, and the star-like shine of sails upon the 
sea-line smothered by the long black coils of furnace smoke. But 
while such yachts as that whose flashing progress 1 watched remain 
afloat, the sea will still possess her English beauties. 

It is the owners of such vessels who are perpetuating all that is 
fair, all that is memorable ot the traditions of our English ship- 
building yards. The survival is a very fit one. It seems proper, 
indeed that the stateliness and elegance ot the sailing-vessel should 
come into the keeping of men to whom the deep is its own exceed- 
ing great reward— as poetry was to Coleridge-^who traverse it for 
love only of its caressing waters and the glorious life of its noble ex- 
panse, and who make it the framework for marine pictures into 
whose idealization enters all that money, fine taste, and devotion to 
what is beautiful and harmonious can furnish. 

Surely to those who lovelier for herself the sea is a bountiful and 
great-hearted mother. The fascination the ocean exercies over the 
mind cannot be expressed in language; and happy is the man who. 


ROUXD THE GALLEY FIKE. 


9& 

yiel(iin|]j to her spell, counts himself one of her sons as a yachtsman. 
Mercantile Jack may profess to despise such seafaring as a fresh- 
water job; but, nevertheless, let him own that he envies the sand- 
white decks, the snug forecastle, the easy life, the glorious runs 
under blue skies and over tumbline; and silver-briirht waters. Jlo 
other form of “ sailorizing ” yields so much unalloyed pleasure. 
Privacy is the first grand privilege. You will get that in your 
yacht, but you wMll get it aboard no other kind ot ship which ever 
1 have heard ot. No amount of passage-money will save you from 
worry and companionship you may not be in the humor'to enjoy 
on board the finest passenger vessel. It is hotel-life; you are a 
number; you have luggase; you are making the voyage tdr a direct 
object; in short, you have a destination, and the having a destina 
tiou makes one of the main differences between yachting and going 
to sea in any other way. 

A .yacht is a man’s home. lie need never be in a hurry. Like 
Jefferson in “ Rip Van Winkle,” he lives about in spots. He may 
leave a good deal to his skipper, but he is always master; he ow’Hn 
the craft which others steer, and never a humor can come into his 
head which he may not indulge without having anybody to argur 
with him. It is a fine thing to be lord of ihe sea in tliis fashion. A 
captain of a big ship is a great man, but he is a sort of a slave also. 
His business is to make haste, and obstacles vex his soul. The 
patent log that he lows astern typfies the condition of his mind. A 
head-sea is an addiction, and most of the wonders of the deep ai(? 
great nuisances to him. He wants to sight nothing. He objects 
to excitements and adventures. All that he prays for is fine weailier, 
and so many nautical miles a day. These are the penalties of having 
a destination. 

The bliss of yachting lies in (he having to go nowhere in paiticu- 
lar, and one port being as good as another. If you can’t weather a 
point, then there is nothing to do but put your helm up and come back 
again. The barometer seldom tells lies, and one of its safe readings, 
which makes yachting so delightful is, ” Keep the harbors aboard. ” 
That, certaini.y, may always be done in the English Channel; and 
not for this reason only does one cease to wonder that it should be 
the most popular of all yachting waters. Much has been written 
about yachting in the Scotch lakes and northward among the isles. 
Such cruising might suit a man who is easily sea-sick, and who is 
never so comfortable as when his tow-rope is aboard a tug. But 
tlie yachtsman who has the instincts of a seaman will choose the 
wide waters of the English Channel, pushing away to the westward 
until the Atlantic swell is under his fore-foot, and his white sails 
mirrored in water as blue as tlie heavens. 

The Channel is a sea of itself, and most of the changes of the sea 
may be felt and enjoyed on its breast. Here you will get breezes 
which toss a yacht prettily enough, and the calms are made beautiful 
and soothing by the gentle swell that runs out of the vague horizon, 
and keeps the water flashing and fading under the sun. Once to 
the westward of the North Foreland, there is no finer space of water 
for yachting, and nowdiere more beautiful shores and nobler coast 
scenery. It is a great martime highway, too, always full of ships, 
and so crowded with marine interests that the yachtsman is never 


100 


IIOFKI) THE GALLEY FIRE. 


weary of looking over the side of his vessel. Given a strong and 
sweeping wind from the southward of east, with the sharp blue- 
sky which that sort of breeze makes; and let the sun still be soar- 
ins:, and the atmosphere so transparent that the coast stands along 
like a photograph; and let your mainsheet be eased, and the wdiite 
heights of the North Foreland on your starboard quarter, the whole 
of the grand old Channel is under your bowsprit. Though there be 
no cups to win, there shall be a hundred races to run as you go;, 
and, keeping to leeward of the Goodwins, every jump of the yacht 
unrolls a glistening length of white, and green, and brown, and 
golden shore. Indeed, there is not a little sport to be got out of the 
unpremeditated races of yachting. 1 remember once coming up, 
Channel, homewardbound, in a fine clipper-ship. We had the wdnd 
abeam, and foretop-mast studding-sail out, and we went ahead of 
everything like a roll of smoke, until, coming abreast of the Isle of 
Wight, a powerful yawl— as superb a yacht as ever 1 saw — came 
frothing and buzzing along, with her main-boom almost amidships, 
and Dunnose like a blue shadow over her stern. She ratched like a 
phantom to windward of us, and then, settling herself upon our 
weather- quarter, starboarded her helm, eased away her sheets fore 
and alt, and overhauled us as if she had a mind to tow us. She 
was in a smother of foam. It must have been up to a man’s knees 
in the lee scuppers. She showed us the whole of her deck — a lady 
sitting in the companion, coolly ogling us through a binocular glass; 
there or four yachtsmen aft, squatting under the weather-rail. But 
the view she offered was not prolonged. She forged ahead of us 
like a “bonito,” and in a couple of hours was a small leaning 
white pillar upon the horizon dead over our bows. 

These are the unpremeditated matches I mean, and I have known- 
some of them to be run with as wild a desire for triumph as ever a 
regular yacht race kindled. They used to make one of the heartiest 
pleasures of yachting; but nowadays where is the foeman worthy 
of the steel of the slashing yawls, and cutters, and schooners*? 
Nearly everything that floats goes by steam, and for a yacht to race 
a steamer would be as sensible as to make up a Derby of locomo- 
tives and thoroughbreds. Yet those crank racers, with their enor- 
mous spread of cloths — though they are things of beauty — are cer- 
’ainly not a joy to everybody. Tliey arc very proper to take prizes; 
but those who love the sea most wisely will least envy the privileges 
of the owners of such craft. 

Sailing with your mast at an angle of fifty degrees, half the niaiu- 
'^ail dark with water, the froth hissing and seething and bubbling up 
to the lee side of the skylights, all hands holding on to windward, and 
wondering what’s going to happen next, may be exhilarating to some 
'^ouls, but it is a mad sort of yachting. These crank and nimble 
spinners give you no clpince of looking about. They are a fine sight 
to watch. 1 know nothing more exciting to witness than a great 
narrow-waisted yawl, almost on her beam ends, hurling through ai> 
ocean of foam, jumping the seas until half her keel is out of water, 
ihen burying her bows in the storm of troth as if she were about to 
dive out of sight, her metal to windw'avd looking like a sheet of 
polished gold, with the sunshine sparkling in the w'et of it. But to 
be aboard! Decks that one can w’alk ou may be an unsailorly prej- 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 


101 


udice, 3 'et they are comfortable; and the obligation to stick to wind- 
ward and to liold on with clinched teeth grows tedious and even 
fatiguing it too long imposed. 

But the word yacht is a generic term, and comprises many differ- 
ent kinds ot vessels. The middle kind between the knite-like racer 
and the motlierly, lubberly tub, is the best for those who go down 
to the sea in pleasure vessels, not to do business, but to enjoy the 
freshness and wonder and beauty ot the ocean. There are scores of 
them afloat, superbly modeled cratt, whose lines would have made 
the old Baltimore clipper-builders green with envy. 

1 will name no names, but will think of a yacht^l have seen — a 
sahooner, near about one hundred and titty tons by yacht measure- 
ment, with magniticent spars exquisitely stayed, a bow bold about 
the figure-head, but fining away with delicate keenness at the fore- 
foot, with such a swell ot the side as promises stability in a gale of 
wind, but arching thence to the keel in a contormalion so tenderly 
sinuous and beautifully clean that a sailor would want to know no 
more to enter her iir his mind as one of the fastest vessels of her 
class. This she is; but she gives you a beam as well as speed. 
There is plenty ot room to walkabout her decks; there is no tear of 
falling down the fore-hatch for want of a gangway to get into tho 
eyes ot her; the coils ot her running-cear are never in the road, la 
there anything more tenderly beautiful than a vessel ot this kind 
slightly leaning under her cotton-white cloths, her polished and 
swelling heights of canvas softly shaded at the leeches, the brass- 
work on her deck fi^l ot blinding crimson stars which wink ITlie 
bursts ot fire from the mouths of cannon watched from a distance, 
as the lift of the swell veers the brilliant metal in and out of tho 
sphere of the sun, while a line of froth streams past her like a 
shower of silver dust upon the sea, and the gentle moaning of water 
at the stem mingles with the vibratory humming of the wind in the 
vessel. 

This is the sort of vessel in which a man can take his ease and 
enjoy all that the sea has to offer. And this, too, is your ship for 
Channel cruising. She would carry you round the world if you 
had the mind to try her. She’ll creep into the wind’s eye with the 
luff of her foresail blow/ng to windward, not shivering, but stand- 
ing out full of wind that way, while the after half is drawing and 
doing its work. I know her to be a typical boat, and that is why I 
describe her. AVhile such a craft as she remains afloat, the grace 
of the sailing-vessel in its most beauteous form survives, and steam 
may be defied to <iemoli8h a lingering but most noble marine ideal 
realized. 

Owners of yachts do not all lake the same view of the delightful 
pastime. Between the yachtsman who never seems so happy as 
when lie is out of soundings, and those sailors who creep from port 
to port, and take a three weeks’ spell of rest in every harborjlhey 
succeed in making, there is a prodigious stretch, filled up by a sur- 
prising variety of tastes. But the harbor-haunting 5 mchtsmau grows 
rare. His excursions to sea, even out of sight of land, are every 
year more frequent. He learns to hear a music in the wind that’s 
piping merrily, and the threat of lightning in the horned moon ceases 
to scare him. Tliis is as it should be. Tachting is surely but a 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


102 

<3orry entertainment when warps hold your vessel asrainst a stone or 
wooden pier, and no livelier recreation offers than bobbing for floun- 
ders in the mud at the bottom of the water along-side. ^ 

Our English summers are not very long, and there is much to be 
seen, much to inspirit the mind, much to invigorate the body. The 
warm and biightly-colored sea, for many a league enriched with 
verdant and dazzling and tender stretches of coast scenery, courts 
the fortunate yachtsman with promises which it never breaks. It is 
not racing only, it is not sailing only ; it is the culm day sleeping 
umler the rich azure heaven; the water a breathless surface of 
molten glass, shadowed here and there where the shallow soundings 
are; the horizon streaked with floating wreaths of vapor or darkened 
by the bluish smoke of a long- vanished steamer; the coast line some 
miles away swimming in the haze of heat, and the water in the south 
blending with the flood of lidit which the sun flashes into it. Here 
and there is a motionless smack, with her reddish sail reflected with- 
out a tremor under her, or a distant ship whose white canvas seems 
to be melting upon the faint light blue over the horizon; or it is the 
summer night, with a flood of moonlight shivering the ripples, 
while on edher hand the sea stretches away in solemn darkness, 
touched faintly in places by the luster of the glorious planets un- 
paled by the moonshine. A soft breeze murmurs over the water, 
and keeps the spectral canvas on high sleeping, and a narrow wake 
goes away astern into the darkness, with fitful flashes ot phosphor- 
ous in the circling eddies, in the run of the ripples as they break 
near the silent hull. 

Small wonder, indeed, that the sea should court men as it does, 
and fascinate them too. Happy the man who can take the pleasure 
it yields as a yachtsman, and in his own beautiful vessel can traverse 
its glorious waters as idly and freely and gayly as the wind that 
impels him. 


A DRUNKEN SHIP. 

In one of Edgar A. Poe’s stories there is an account of a crew 
clinging to the bottom of their capsized vessel, and watching a ship 
approach them. She comes yawdng and steering very wildly, but 
there are people aboard, and the poor sailors are full of hope; until 
on a sudden an insufferable smell is borne to them by the wind, and 
they discover that the figures lolling upon theship’s sides are putre- 
fying corpses. 

This tale of horror as well as of imagination came into my head 
some time ago, when I read the evidence that had been tendered in 
St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, by a certain pier manager and cox- 
swain of the life-boat belonging to a north-western town. He said 
that at about half-past five in the morning he was roused out by a 
man who told him that there was a vessel drifting ashore. He hur- 
ried down to the beach, and saw a bark of between three and four 
hundred tons a short distance off under lower topsails. There was 
a fresh breeze from the westward. He watched the vessel a few 
minutes, and perceived that she would sometimes fall off so as to 
bring the breeze on her quarter, and then round close to the wind. 


EOUJSTD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


103 


like Poe’s dreadful ship, and that she was coming ashore as fast as 
ever she could drive. The life-boat was launched when this 
strangely behaved bark was within one hundred and fitly fathoms 
of the beach, and on the boat getting along-side a strong smell of 
rum and- water was found to pervade the atmosphere. A man got 
on to the rail and dropped into the boat, and the coxswain said “ he 
seemed stupefied, took no notice of anytldng, and did not speak.” 
This was the skipper. The rest of the crew tumbled into the life- 
boat and were conveyed ashore, while the bark took the ground and 
became a total wreck, nothing being saved but some sails and a 
few stores. 

Such a very unusual circumstance as that of a well-found bark 
sailing ashore, as one might put it, of her own will, was sure to 
have a queer story behind it. And assuredly the story is a queer 
,one, making one of the most disgraceful narratives to be found in 
'the modern marine annals. It shall be told by a specimen of one ot 
those plain, honest, English seamen who captains sa}'’ are no longer 
to be found, and whose extinction they declare obliges them to ship 
“ Dutchmen.” 1 will not give this excellent man’s name, glad as 1 
should be to do so, for the punishment inflicted on the captain and 
mate by the court that inquired into their conduct would render a 
large public identification a needless supplementary penally. The 
certificate of competency held by the captain has been canceled, but 
to the mate there has been granted a twelve months’ chance of 
reformation, and this alone should explain the reason for suppress- 
ing all names. 

“ The bark was a vessel of three hundred and forty tons, and we 
had a crew of ten men, not counting the captain and mate. We 
were bound for Quebec, which, 1 reckon, should make a ship’s 
course about west by south; but on this, as you’ll make note pres- 
ently, all mariners don’t seem to be agreed. The whole of the crew.^ 
saving me and another whose name shall be Bill, were drunk when 
the bark left Liverpool. Speaking of the fo’ksle, 1 don’t mean to 
say there’s anything unusual in this. Drink’s grown with legisla- 
tion. In old times, where there was less law, there was less lush. 
It’s a teetotal age, this; nothing but 'water going in vessels, and the 
consequence is that men newly shipped, knowing that there’ll be no 
grog betwixt this and the next port, go in for a bout of drinking to 
serve them, as it might be, for the whole voyage. See ’ejn come 
aboard, sprawling and roaring too sick to stand, rolling below, and 
leaving the sliip to sail away with no one but the idlers— and them 
drunk, tao, maybe— to do her work for t went j’-- four hours or longer. 
If 1 was an owner my ship shouldn’t be a teetotaler. Every day, at 
noon, there should be a can cf rum on the capstan for the men-— a 
tot apiece; but I’d make thts rule, that any man as came aboard in 
liquor should have no grog served out to 1dm for the rest of the 
voyage. That -would stop the drunkenness ships carry away from 
the ports, and all the dangers which a drunken crew brings on a 
vessel that’s got to grope her way down rivers and along channels 
full of peril. , , ,, 

“ Well, there was ten of us, and eight were drunk. 1 m speak- 
ing of forrards; I’ll come aft presently. 1 never saw men worse 
in liquor. You remember thtjm Scoichmeu that used to stand at 


104 


fiOL^:s’D THf: GALLEY FILE. 


tobacconist's doors, taking a pinch of snuff? dummies they were, 
you’ll recall. Well, think of giving one of ’em a shove, and seeing 
him fall. If ye can fix such an object in your imagination you’ll 
•comprehend the sort of helplessness of my eight shipmates. They 
lay in the fo’ksle as lifeless as bits of timber; and this being the 
condition of the bark, we were towed out with the pilot aboard, 
and then when abreast of the Nor’west Lightship, were left to shift 
for ourselves. The mate was aft, me at the wheel, and Bill for- 
ward. There was not an inch of canvas on our vessel, and no one 
on deck excepting those I’ve mentioned. While we were lowing, 
the mate came up to have a look at the compass nowand again, and 
then 1 noticed that if he wasn’t downright slewed he didn’t want 
very many more nips to settle his business. He goes lurching along 
till he comes abreast of the main-rigging, and here he lays hold and 
sings out, ‘ All hands make sail. Tumble up, my lively hearties! 
Bear a hand with your hair-oil and your silk stockings, my sweet 
and noble fellows!’ 

“But nobody took any notice except Bill, who sings out, 
" There’s no tumbling up aboard this gallant vessel sir— leastways, 
forrards; there’s naught but tumbling down.’ At which the mate 
bursts into a loud laugh, swaying upon the rope he had hold of as 
though he meant to swing off on it. Then, looking up and around, 
he sings out, 

“ ‘ This ain’t a steamer. The sails must be loosed and the yards 
hoisted, bully, if the Liverpool gells are ever to clap eyes on us 
brave mariners again ; so jumpjbelow among them dreadful drunkards 
and rout ’em out; rout ’em out, do you hear?’ 

“ Well, Bill did as he was told, and after a bit he managed to 
shove two or three of the crew through the scuttle on to the deck. 
They stood blinkin’ in the .light like owls, rolling up against one 
another with their hair over their faces, and their clothes looking 
as if they had been put on upside down. 

“‘Now, then! now, then!’ sings out the mate, who couldn’t 
keep his legs, without holding on; ‘ what’s the meaning of this here 
dissipation? There’s no drink allowed aboard this tidy little ship. 
There’s nothing but the teetotal lay to be found in this handsome 
iiooker. Milk-and-water, my bully sailor lads! that’s the tap it 
ever ye want to end as philosophers. Loose the fore-top-mast stay- 
sail. Loose the spanker. Get the main top-mast staysail on her. 
Lay out, some one, and loose die inner jib. And he rattled order 
after order as though he’d got a ship’s company of fifty men to do 
his bidding. 

“ How the drunken fellows scraped through the job I’m sure I 
don’t know. It was a bad lookout for us two sober men, but for 
the life of me I couldn’t help laughing to watch the sailors Bill 
had managed to shove on deck go aloft. Talk of hanging on with 
jour eyelids! Again and again 1 expected to see ’em all drop over- 
board; but 1 suppose their instincts for holding on were there, 
though their senses were gone, and the same mental henergy it was’ 
no doubt, as enabled them to get the gaskets adrift and loose the 
lower top-sails. When those sails were sheeted home — the jib, 
staysails, and spanker being already set— the drunken men refused 
to do any more work; they rolled over to the scuttle and disap- 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


105 

peared, tlie mate lookin^]^ on, but too intoxicated to act. The skip- 
per all this while never showed himself, 1 asked the mate what 
course 1 w’as to steer. 

^ ‘ Course?’ said he; ‘ why,, keep the vessel’s head followin’ the 

jib-boom, can’t ye?’ 

Easy enough,’ says I; ‘ but where’s the jib-boom a-going?’ 

No impudence!’ he cries out. ‘ Smother me if 1 know what 
the British sailor’s a-coming to! It’s all drink and jaw nowadays.. 
What’s become of all the old, ’spectable, sober seamen?— tell me 
that, you terrapin.’ 

“ There was no use arguing with a man who couldn’t stand with- 
^ out hoidiug on. 1 says, ‘ I’m not going to steer this bark all day,, 
especially as we seem bound to nowheres. My trick was up and 
out a long spell since.’ 

“ ‘ And d’ye think,’ says he ‘ the vessel don’t know her way with- 
out you? Hook it forrard, afore 1 skin yer!’ 

“ 1 let go the wheel and walked forward. I looked behind me 
as 1 went, making sure that he’d take my place. But the deuce a 
bit. He was leaning against the rail, and shook his first at mo 
when 1 turned my head, and there w*as the bark without any one 
steering her, her fore-and-att canvas full, but her top sails aback^ 
and her whole company, saving two, so drunk* as to be incapable. 
It was a good job that old Drainings was not so drunk as the*others, 
otherwise we should have been obliged to light the galley fire and 
get ourselves supper. We were not disposed to take this job upon 
ourselves; so we hauled him on deck and gave him several buckets 
of whaler, which appeared to wash some of the fuipes out of his in- 
tellects, and he then turned to — in a very staggering fashion, sar- 
tinly — and got us some tea, being scared by our threats to drown 
him out of hand if he didn’t tend to our w^imls. 

“ Me and my mate hung about the deck forrard watching to see 
if the skipper showed himself, but he never appeared, wdiich, taken 
along with the condition of the mate, made us suppose he was 
drunk too; but we couldn’t have swore to this without getting a 
sight of him first. 1 says to Bill. ‘ Here’s a pretty lookout. What’s 
to be done? No one at the wheel; no one in charge; everybody 
drunk, and the night coming along.’ 

“ ‘ There’s nothing to be done,’ answers Bill, ‘ except to turn in 
and take our chance. It won’t do for us to take command of the 
bark. If there’s to be a mess, let it find the skipper boss, not u-. 
I don’t want no magistrate’s job, for one. We’re but common 
sailors, and common sailors have but a poor chance now when it 
comes to law, and the fight’s between (hem and the captain.’ 

“ This was a middlin’ sensible view; but still, life’s life, and I 
couldn’t quite see my way to turn in aboard a drifting ship, and 
take our chance of all going well throughout the night. So, calling- 
old Drainings, who was getting his senses and beginning to under- 
stand the muddle we was all in, we lighted our pipes and had a 
long confab, the end of it being an agreement that the three of us 
should keep a lookout, turn and turn about. There was to be no 
steering— nothing but looking. Well, I Kept the first lookout, and 
in all them hours I never see either the captain or the mate on deck. 
The breev.e was’ small, and the ship lay steady enough, her top-sails 


106 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE 


aback and her staysails drawin<^. Two or three steamers drove past, 
and I’m pietty sartin they’d have been into us it 1 hadn’t taken the 
precaution to get the side-lights over. Bill relieved me at six bells, 
-we having settled for his turn to follow mine, so as to give Drain- 
ings time to sleep off the rest of the rum that worked in his system. 
When I went below the fo’ksle was as hot as an oven, such a smell 
ot liquor about as would have made you think yourself in a public- 
house, and all hands snoring so loud that you might have reckoned 
the bark was sailing ten miles an hour, and that noise the sound of 
ihe water rolling away from her stem. I turned in all standing, 
ready for whatever might happen, and fell asleep, and when 1 woke 
it was to the tuneot a desperate hammering on deck. It was broad 
daylight, and, when 1 tumbled up, I found the mate beating the 
deck and bawling at the top of his voice, ‘ up with ye, you drunken 
swine! up naked, every mother’s son of you, and don’t stop to 
dress!’ he was roaring, tilling up his meaning with more oaths than 
he had fingers and toes. He was just in the same condition he had 
been in all along, rolling and sprawling here and there, and fogging 
the air all about him with the smell o’ spirits. 

“ Old Drainings was at the wheel, and 1 spied the captain aft, hold- 
ing on to a backstay with one hand and shaking his other hand at 
Drainings, who grinned in his face. Thougli pretty near the whole 
ship’s length was betwixt us, 1 easily saw that the captain was as 
drunk as his mate. By and by he turns his head and sings out for 
the male to lay aft. The mate goes, and the skipper, fetching him 
a thumping whack on the back — meant tor love and good-fellow- 
ship— casts his arm round the other’s neck, and down they tumbled 
below for another’reviver, no doubt. Drainings left the wheel and 
came forrard. 

“ ‘ 1 can’t help lauirhing at the old man,’ says he; ‘ never heerd 
such nonsense as he talks. But, all the same, what’s to do?’ says 
he. ‘ We shall be driving ashore if we^'dou’t mind. Have any ot 
the men recovered?’ 

“ ‘ I’ve not had time to see,’ 1 answers, and 1 dropped down the 
fo’ksle-halch to have a look. I stirred them as was on the deck 
with my foot and made some of them talk to me; but there was not 
one man among them as was of any use. The}" had not only come 
aboard steeped to the eyes in drink, but had brought a quantity of lush 
along with them; and two or three empty black bottles knocking 
about ’splained how it was that sleeping in all night hadn’t made 
these scow -banks fit for duty. 

“ Well, I don’t want to make an endless job of this yarn, or I’d 
give you the particulars of that day and the night as followed. By 
that time most ot the men had recovered their senses, and me and 
Bill took care, as fast as ever we could get ’em to sit up and listen, 
to ’splain the quandary the vessel was in, and our danger. This 
sobered ’em quicker than water would have done. They came 
on deck and took a look around, saw nobody at the wheel, no one 
in charge, and nothing on tho bark but what we had made shift to 
hoist after the tug had left us. 

“ This was the afternoon of the third day. The weather looked 
•dirty in the south-west, and shortly before five o’clock the wind 
breezed up hard. Luckily, we was under small canvas, I says to 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


lor 

the men, ‘ The best thing we can do is to haul down the staysails 
and heave her to. There’s no telling where she’s been drifting to 
all these days. No sights have been taken, the log never hove, no 
reckoning ot any kind kept. Whether we’re off England, Hireland, 
or Scotland, I’m not going to calculate; but one thing I’m certain 
sure of, we shall be having one of tliein kingdoms close aboard of 
us before long; and so 1 reckon our business is to slow down this 
here drift as fur as we can, while we see if the captain means to 
take charge and sail the vessel to Quebeck, or keep drunk and send 
us all to the bottom. 

“ Everybody being agreeable, we hauled down the staysails and 
backed the foretop-sail. There was no watches, the crew hadn’t 
been divided; however, w’e formed ourselves into two gangs, and 
agreed to keep watch and watch till morning’; then, if things re- 
mained as they was, we arranged for some of us to go aft to the- 
captain, and if he refused to-do his duty, to hoist a distress signal 
and ’splain our situation to the first ship as came along. Tlie deuce 
of it was, ye see, there was ne’er a man forrards as knew anything 
of navigation. Had we turned to and seized the skipper’s instru- 
ments and charts, they’d have been of no use to us. Well, next 
morning arrived, and found the bark still drifting, and the w’eather 
as thick as mud in a wine-glass. All hands assembled, and we held 
a sort o’ Parliament; and then it was agreed that 1 and another 
should go aft and inquire of the captain what he meant by this 
conduct, ’Cordingly we lay aft, and going into the cabin found 
the mate lying there drunk, though not incapable. He asked us 
what we wanted; but we took no notice, pushing on to the captain’s 
berth. We hammered on the door, but, getting no answ’er, opened 
it, and saw him lying sound asleep, and kinder stupefied, in his 
bunk. We laid hold of him and hauled till we’d roused him up. 

“ ‘ Captain/ says 1, ‘ we’ve come aft to ask what you mean to do- 
with the bark. She’s drifting anyhow, and all hands feel their lives 
to be in danger,’ 

“ ‘ Pooh, pooh!’ says he, stretching his arms and gaping, ‘ it’s all 
right. Rave a glass of grog?’ 

“ ‘ No,’ 1 says, firmly; ‘ we don’t want no grog. What we require 
is to know what you mean to do?’ 

“ Instead of answering, he lay back, turned over, and shut his 
eyes; so, seeing that there was no satisfaction to be got, we came 
away and went forrards again. Tlie men wmre now thoroughly 
scared. They said they warn’t going to stand skylarking of this 
kind, and if the captain didn’t turn-to and take charge and sail the 
ship back to Liverpool they’d knock off work. 1 went aft once 
more with this message; but though I nearly dragged the captain 
ottt of his bed, Icoukin’t make him understand, nor even rouse him 
up. So I walked up to the mate and told him of the men’s resolu- 
tion. 

“ ‘ 1 don’t care,’ says he; ‘ it’s no business of mine. I’m not go- 
ing to do anything without the captain’s orders.’ 

We was in a regular fix. The weather was so thick that it 
would need a ship to come very close to make out any signal we 
miglit hoist; we pone of us knew where we were, in what directioii 
to steer, what to do with the bark it we took charge of her. AVhile 


108 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


we were debating, the mate came out and orders ua to square the 
yards. 

“ ‘What for?’ says the crew. 

“ ‘ Why, for Liverpool,’ he answers. 

We turneti-lo, with a will, the mate standing at the cabin door 
looking at us. We held on E.S.E. till about midnight, when we 
spied a light on the port quarter, and the mate said it was* the 
Chickens off the Calf o’ man. It proved to be nothing of the kind, 
but Morecambe Bay light. At daybreak the land was plain to be 
seen about four miles distant, and the captain, who was now on deck, 
gave orders for the helm to be put up to let her drive ashore, which 
she did, the life-boat coming out when we was close on to the leach, 
and taking us all off. The first to drop into the boat was the skip- 
per; he wasn’t too drunk to do that. 

“ What, d’ye say to this tale of the sea, sir? What’ll the public 
think of merchant sailors, after hearing it? 84iould you think proper 
to print it, I’ll allow that there’ll not be a landsman as won’t reckon 
it an out-and-oul twister, spun from the winch o’ your own inven- 
tion. But, that there may be no doubt about it, just add what the 
finding of the Court was as inquired into this business: ‘ Neither the 
master nor the male attended properly to his duties in navigating 
the vessel. They were both under the influence of drink during the 
voyage. The vessel was not navigated with proper and seamanlike 
care. She was stranded owing to the utter neglect from drunken- 
ness of both master and mate. The Court considered that this was 
about as gross a case as ever came before a court of iuquir 3 %. and 
found both master and mate grievously and wrongfully in fault.’ 

“ IMild enough, sir. Had the Court been aboard, you may take 
your oath they’d have drawed it considerably stronger.” 


A SAILORS CLUB. 

Not very far from the London Docks, and within' a stone’s-throw 
of that refined and odoriferous thoroughfare known as Leman 
Street, Whitechapel, there is situated a large, fine building, with en- 
trances coramaniliug two streets, and a summit that towers very nobly 
among the adjacent roofs. Once upon a time the Royal Brunswick 
Theater stood where that house now stands, and vestiges of the old 
structure still linger in the form of some pillars or columns at the 
main entrance, and various underground avenues, in whose atmos- 
phere, despite forty years of very strong marine flavoring, there 
seems to lurk to this hour a kind of ghostlj' sn^ll of ancient orange- 
peel. The house is known far and wide as the ” Well Street Home 
for Sailors;” and 1 once accepted an invitation from the manager 
to overhaul the premises, and judge for myself to what extent the 
Home improves upon the comforts and privileges the sailor flatters 
himself he may obtain at a common seaman’s boarding or lodging 
house. I must own that 1 approached the place with a certain 
amount of foregone prejudice. 

Establishments known as Harbors of Refuge, Seaman’s Sheet 
Anchor, Ports of Call, and the like, all mariners who will not sham 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 


109 


piety for the sake ot a coat, or a plugot tobacco, ora meal of bread 
'and meal, will keep to windward of. Jack objects to this kind of 
classification. He dislikes to be dealt with as something apart from 
the ordinary run of mortals; to be preached to in a language which 
the minister may fondly imagine to be the dialect of the sea; to 
have tracts doled out to him in the form of marine allegories, as if 
he could comprehend no other allusions to life and death, and sin 
and virtue, than those which referred to heaving billows and storm- 
diiven barks and broken tackle; and, when ashore, to make one ot 
a flock ot seamen, to meet nobody but seamen, to go to prayers in 
a church filled with seamen; to be treated indeed, as it he ought to 
•carry a badge or number on his back, as it his whole class were 
socially tabooed. So, thinking this Well Street Home to have 
something of the old unpleasant and ill-judging form of charity 
mixed up in its composition, and considerably disturbed in mind by 
the first tour lines of its forty seventh annual report, I entered the 
Dock Street entrance, never doubting but that 1 should meet wdth 
plenty of features to account for the sailor’s prefererice for the grimy, 
irouzy, and squalid lodging-houses, of which there were some 
■dozens in the neighborhood. 

1 found m3^selt in a very large hall filled with seamen. There 
was perliaps hardly a nationality that was not represented. En- 
glishmen and Scandinavians were plentiful; but in numerous places 
were black and yellow skins, the sight of which carried the mind 
thousands ot miles east and south, and brought up visions ot skies 
different indeed from the brown heavens which were caretring in 
gloomy folds over the chimney-pots visible through the windows. 
In a few moments 1 was joined b}’’ the manager, and we proceeded 
to inspect the premises. In a manner it was like surveying St. Paul’s 
Cathedral. Big as the building looked outside, it seemed four times 
as large again vvhen 1 began to roam about it. Room led into 
room, wing conducted into wdng, until inethought Whitechapel it- 
■self might seem to lack area enough for the accommodutiou of this 
most ramified and capacious interior. Behind a glass front stood a 
porter wading through several huge piles of letters in search ot those 
expected by some dozen men, who eagerly waited w’hile he looked. 

“ The correspondence here must be enormous,” said I, ” judging 
by those samples,” 

It is enormous,” answered the manager. Thousands upon 
thousands of letters and telegrams are received and distributed in ., 
the course of the year.” 

We entered a large room with a circular counter in it, belund 
which were several clerks hard at work over their ledgers, while a 
number ot seamen were drawing or paying in money. 

“This is the bank,” said the manager; ” here we receive such 
moneys as the men choose to deposit, and credit them with the 
wages which they have to receive from the ships they have been dis- 
-charged from. Here, too, we cash their allotment notes, and what 
we do in that way jmu may guess by looking at that long box there, 
that is full ot allotment notes which are maturing at various dates ” 

” But,” said 1, ” 1 thought the allotment note was only made pay- 
•able to a relative or to a savings-bank. This is not a savings bank?” 

” Oh,” he exclaimed, dryly, ‘ there are two kinds of allotment 


110 


ROUND THE GALLEY' FIRE. 

notes. One is, as you say, payable only to a relative or a savini^s- 
bank; the other is an a illegal document, sanctioned by the Board 
ot Trade, February, 1868— here it is in the corner; you see their 
imprimatur?” said he, handing me one of the notes. 

‘‘ What is the meaning of this,” said 1, “ at the bottom of the 
note? ‘ Caution. The Merchant Shipping Act does not provide 
nummary remedy in the case of this note.’ 

‘‘Only a confession that a blunder was made,” he answered, 
” when the Act was passed. The advance note was said to encour- 
Mge crimping; accordingly, the allotment note was substituted. 
The seaman protested, as he found the note practically useless. In- 
'^tead of rescinding or modifying the Act, an illegal concession was 
made by the issue ot notes payable to anybody, like the old advance 
note. The issue is sanctioned by the Board of Trade, who com- 
promise with their official conscience by giving the holder of the 
!iote to understand that he cannot recover upon the note by sura- 
inary retnedy. The old advance note was made payable three days- 
after the man had sailed in the ship; in the present note the ship- 
owner protects himself by making the note payable fifteen days, 
or in some instances thirty days, after the man has sailed. This 
may not increase the risk, but the delay in payment causes the 
holder to charge a heavier rate of interest for cashing the note, so 
that practically the Act leaves the sailor as much at the mercy of 
the boarding-house keeper as he was in the days ot the advance 
note. We have hi! herto charged nothing for cashing these notes; 
but we shall have to do so in self-protection, for we are perpetually 
losing money by them; and the law, which sanctions their issue, 
yet deprives the holder df all means ot recovering on them.” 

So much for British maritime legislation, thought 1. Here are 
people, willing to pay the sailor the amount his note is worth with- 
out any deduction whatever, obliged to own that they can no longer 
act in this liberal manner, because the law prevents them from deal 
ing with the dishonest clients who rob them! Will the day never 
come when the hidden part ot our gigantic marine interests will be 
capably represented in the House ot Commons? 

‘‘ Any pray,” said I to the manager, ‘‘ where are your bed- 
rooms?” 

He led me a short distance, and presently we came to a stand at 
the bottom of what I may call a shaft of galleries of a very cuiious 
skeleton-like appearance. The highest tier was probably about sev- 
enty feet. Every fibrine-looking gallery or platform ran the whole 
length of the wing, and was flanked on either hand with rows of 
little bulkheaded rooms called cabins, all of them numbered, and 
every one containing an exceedingly comfortable wire-w'ove spring 
mattress, slung by a species of metal triangle from the ceiling. 1 
found that there were three ot these gallery shafts situated in wings 
of the building, and capable of comfortably accommodating and 
bedding between five and six hundred persons. Oneof those gigan- 
tic ranges ot cabins, dedicated to the late Admiral Hope, struck me 
as exceedingly handsome and curious. The lower berths here are 
devoted to the mates and captains. They are large,' airy, superbly 
ventilated; but these are the characteristics of all the cabins. At 
one end of this fine division is a marble tablet inscribed to Admiral 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


Ill 

Hope, witli handsomely carved colored flags on either side. To see 
these cabins, the manner in which they are poised one above 
another, the stairs leading up to them, the delicate tracery ot the plat- 
forms, and observe the seamen coming out of their rooms and descend 
ing the steps fi fly and sixty feet above your head, is to get a new theory 
of human existence. 1 never saw anyihingmoie comfortable, more 
clever, more strange. 1 mounted to one of these galleries with the 
manager, and seeing a cabin door open put my head in. The place 
was in gloom, and 1 was about to withdraw, when to m)’’ astonish- 
ment 1 observed what looked like two little half-moons glimmering 
in the dusk. 1 stared, and was amazed to find a negro lying upon 
a chest, reading. I saw the whites of his eyes the moment he rolled 
them up to look at me, but the rest of him being black was not to 
be discerned at once. I asked him wliat he was reading. 

“ The Bible,” said he, showing the book. 

He was newly arrived at Hull from Barbados, he said, and had 
come to London to look for a berth as steward aboard a ship bound 
to the West Indies. He was a handsomely-spoken, well-mannered 
young fellow, pronouncing his words with the finish of a man of 
culture. We next visited the dining-room. This was a great de- 
partment with rows of tables stretched along it, all covered with white 
linen and hospitably furnished with good glass and cutlery. At a 
large center heating contrivance stood a carver flourishing an im- 
mense knife over a big pile of joints of roast beef. -Sirloins, ribs, 
top-sides were mixed up, but the manager said that did not matter, 
as there would be little enough to be seen of them presently. A 
number of waiters ran in and out setting dishes of potatoes, vege- 
tables, puddings, bowls of soup, and such matters, on the table, and 
it needed nothing but a loving-cup and a flourish of trumpets to 
make the thing look like a civic feast. Presently a bell was beaten, 
the -seamen came tumbling in, and in a trice every table was 
crowded, and all hands eating their hardest. 

“ There is plenty of independence here, apparently,” said I, 
looking round at the rows ot ” shell backs;” and I appreciated the 
term when I marked the taut curve of their shoulders, working 
away with the spoons and knives and forks. 

“Independence!” exclaimed the manager. “Why, no hotel 
confeis more privileges. We are in reality a club. We were 
originally called a Home, and have, stuck to the name; but I think 
it would be belter had we borne the title ot Club, for there is some- 
thing in the sound ot a Home that savors of charity, and charity is 
a thing most seamen object to.” 

“What are your charges?” 

“Pifteen shillings a week to the men and eighteen shillings to 
mates, who eat in a room by themselves.” 

“ Do you mean to say,'' 1 exclaimed, “ that you give these men a 
bedroom apiece and feed them after the fashion I now see for fifteen 
shillings a week?” 

“Yes,” said he, smiling at my surprise. “And we go a little 
further even than that; for if a sailor arrives here without clothes 
or means, we dress him and put money in his pocke't, and repay 
ourselves by deducting the amount, without a farthing of extra 


112 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


charge, from the allotment note he receives from the ship in which, 
in numerous instances, we procure him a berth.” 

” And may the men do as they like here?” 

“As it they were in their own house. We close at halfpast 
twelve; but there is a night porter, and a man is admitted at any 
hour.” 

” So that, practically, this is nothing but a first-class hotel, worked 
at a cost that enables the very poorest seamen to use it?” 

” Exactly. Our sole object is to provide the sailor with a com- 
fortable home while he is on shore, help him in evey way that he 
will allow, and so keep him clear of the boarding-house people — the 
wretched men and still more wretched women who prey upon him, 
drug him with vile drinks, cruell.y rob him, and often turn him 
adrift with scarcely a stitch on his back. Come, sir; more remains 
to be seen.” 

He took me down-stairs into a ready-made clothing shop belong- 
ing to the Home. 

” The tailors in the neighborhood,” said he, laughing, ” more es- 
pecially those who pay women commission to bring sailors to their 
shops, don’t love us for this invasion of their rights or wrongs, tor 
our charge for clothes is very little above the price they cost us, and 
a man may get here for two pounds ten a suit he would have to pay 
eight or nine guineas for to a boarding-house tailor. I may say the 
same thing of the bar we have opened. There were some murmurs 
at first among the directors; but, sir, we found lemonade and colfee 
would not do. They drove the sailors to the public-houses, for the 
men would have their glass, and if they could not get it here they 
would go to low places for it. Jack must be treated sensibly, as a 
man with brains. To stop his grog at sea is one thing, but to put 
him upon cold water on shore is merel}^ to drive him to those who 
live by plundering him. The result of opening a bar here has been 
to extinguish half the public-houses in the neighborhood, and you 
may believe me when 1 say that our people know their business too 
well to suffer any approach to intemperance in this Home.” 

” Well,” said I, ” 1 came here expecting to find a lot of false and 
mischievous sentiment mixed up in the administration of the place. I 
see that Jack’s character is understood among you. You treat him 
as a rational man, and he respects you lor it. No wonder the same 
people return again and again.” 

” There is no need for a man to do anything here he does not 
like,” said the manager. ‘‘We have serious, sober, steady fellows 
among us; tor them there are prayers morning and evening, and .all 
may attend who will. But there is no obligation to be present. So 
.at church — yonder it is, close to the Home, you see — we muster a 
good congregation; but there is no compulsion. Whatever can be 
<ione to reclaim those who need it, to help to set men right, to teach 
them to lift up their thoughts, w^e attempt; but there is no forcing 
of religion, nothing to induce hypocrisy on the one hand, nor to ex- 
cite aversion on the other. We say, ‘ My lads, here are your oppor- 
tunities, take them it j^ou will; but, take them or le.ave them, tve 
wish to do our duty by you, to make your lives ashore h.appy and. 
comfortable, 'to keep you to windward of the low and naiiscous 
snares which are everywhere set about for you, to come between; 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


115 

your simplicity and the acts of the miscreants wlio find their ac- 
count in your easy-going natures. That is about the amount of our 
Hieory,” said the manager; “ and if we are not greatly successful, 
it is l^cause tlie job we have set ourselves to perform is a ver\% very 
large one.” 

From the dining-room we went to the basement, where 1 was 
shown a number of capital bath-rooms, fitted with a plentiful supply 
of hot and cold water; a laundry and drying-rooms; store-rooms 
filled with joints of meat, loaves of bread baked in the establish- 
ment, white as milk and of a flavor that made one think of farm- 
houses and Mrs. Poyser; sacks of flour, potatoes, and other things 
of that kind; and an immense kitchen, with a wonderful array of 
ovens and boilers for cooking by steam; everything as polished and 
bright as a new bell, and not the smallest feature anywdiere discerni- 
ble that did not exhibit the complelest signs of anxious and attentive 
supervision. This Well Street building may be called a Home, and 
in a sense may answer to that character, but in reality it is nothing 
but a fine, admirably managed marine hotel or club, filled with bed- 
rooms a good deal more comfortable than many a one in a hotel that 
a man has had to pay five or six shillings a night for; providing 
liberal meals in the shape of breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper, and 
furnishing the seaman with all the comforts of a first-rate club for 
the extraordinarily moderate charge of fifteen shillings a week. 
What does such an institution replace? Or rather what is it 
designed to replace? I suppose there is no part of the sailor’s 
shore-doings more talked about and less understood than the 
life he leads at the greas}’' little boarding-house kept b}' a crimp or 
a tailor, or w’orse still, by old women and abandoned daugh- 
ters. I stood gazing at one of these houses — a broken-dowm bit 
of a hole, with an evil, swaggering look in the posture of its 
door, and with dirty stained white blinds in tlie wdndows— and 
thought what a wonderful, dreadful book might be made of the 
scenes that had taken place in it. A sailor man was at my side, 
and I fell into a short talk with him. ^ 

“ Do you regularly stop at the club?” 1 asked. 

” Yes; it is my home whenever 1 am in London. 1 have used it 
for years, and so have scores of the men you see.” 

” A pity all sailors are not equally alive to their owm inter^ests,” 
said I. ” Here they are made really comfortable tor a few shillings 
a week; money is advanced to them/ clothes furnished to them at 
cost price, a hundred little comforts placed within their reach, and 
friends are at hand to help them to a berth it they find difficulty in 
getting a ship.” 

” Perfectly true,” said my compahien. 

” What attraction beyond the privileges and happiness a resi- 
dence in this club-house offers can they discover,” said I, pointing 
to tbe miserable little boarding-house we confronted, “in such a 
den as that?” 

” Most of the men you find in such places are forced into them,”^ 
replied the man. “ All about here is filled with touts and runners 
and their bullies. Sailors are watched coming ashore: they may 
want to put up at this Home; but the boarding-house runners are 
at hand. to tumble ’em into cabs, drink is given them, the girls— 


114 


ROUX I) THE GALLEY FIRE. 


and such (iirls!— are called in fo help, and'if the men are obstinate 
they are fallen upon and beaten; and, to such an extent is this kind 
of intimidation carried on, that however anxious a man may be to 
rescue a shipmate from the hands of those rascals, he’ll think twice 
before he does it; for so sure as he attempts to interfere and bring 
a man to this Home, so sure is he of being fallen upon and half 
killed when he’s alone and the night’s come. There’s not a police- 
man hereabouts but is full of stories of such work.” 

” And what,*pray, is the sailor’s life in the low sort of lodging- 
house?” 

” A vile debauch, as a rule, caused by the temptation thrust upon 
him. It would be difficult to make respectable u^eople understand 
how he’s robbed. 1 knew a man wdio was brought to one of these 
dens and asked to ‘ shout’ — that is, to stand a drink all round. He 
did so, and was made drunk. Next day lie was charged for eight 
* shouts,’ the people swearing he had ordered the liquor, and that it 
was not their fault if he was too intoxicated to remember. That’s 
only one sample. Abandoned women are kept in the pay of the 
slop tailors to bring seamen tp their shops and press them to buy, 
and a single purchase at such places is enough to ruin a poor man. 
There are, no doubt, respectable boarding-houses, but they are few 
and tar between; the most of them are kept by rascally men and 
women, -who,- taking the sailor as a simple-hearted fellow, fresh 
from a spell of salt-water, and willing for a bit of a frisk, ply him 
until they have peeled him, and then kick him out. It was not long 
ago that a pencil scrawl was broueht to this Home. It had been 
chucked out of a lodging-house window by a man to a friend who 
was passing. It stated that the people of the house had stolen all 
the writer’s clothes, and it begged the manager to send up a suit 
that the man might get away,” 

” Such things must be kndwn to sailors?” said I. 

“ Ay,” he replied, ” and a good deal more.” 

” And yet many of them persist in putting up those haunts?” 

” I can’t account tor it,” said he. ” Here’s such a chance as any 
gentleman with plenty of money in his pocket might be glad to take; 
and yet there are sailors who’ll carry their bags or chests to the 
lodging-houses, as certainly knowing that, they are going there to 
be robbed of all they have as tliat their feet are upon dry ground.” 

I have only ventured to write down a very little part of what I 
was told about these lodging-houses. I will not pretend to be ig- 
norant of much of the inner life of those places; but I own that 
some of the stories related to me tilled me with horror and astonish- 
ment that such deeds should still be doing in this enliglitened age 
of marine progress. But is it not strange that so truly valuable an 
institution as this Well Street Home, which counts bisimps. mar- 
quises, admirals, and captains in abundance among its directors, 
should be deliberately neglected, and even viewed hostilely, by the 
Board of Trade, whose efforts to promote the interests of the sailor 
it helps to a degree no one would credit without close and careful 
investigation of its theory and practice? Why, for instance, should 
the Board of Trade decline to license a shipping-master in connec- 
tion with this Home? Surely the directorate should abundantly 
guarantee the character of the duties such an official would dis- 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


115 


cliarp:e. What conceivable object can the Board of Trade have in 
objecting to the Home endeavoring, by legal means, to obtain em- 
ployment on board ship for the numerous highly respectable men 
who use the institution, and who must often want help to obtain a 
berth? Tlie Home asks for no State help; it is self-supporting; it 
has extinguished a number ot low public-houses and crimps’ haunts 
in its neighborhood; it is doing a great work; and no man who 
values the sailor can read the list of gentlemen whose names are as- 
sociated with it without an emotion of graitude to them for the gen- 
erous, wise, and humane part they are playing. Surely it is the 
duty of the Slate to co-operate with the endeavors which the work- 
ing of this Home exemplifies, and to omit nothing that may tend to 
lighten the labors of its exemplar}?^ officials, and advance the truly 
national purpose tor which it was originally established. 


THE PERILS OF HUMAJSITT. 

“ Sir,” said a middle-aged master of a merchantman to me a few 
days since, laying down his pipe in order to grope with both hands 
at once in his waistcoat-pockets — ” 1 should very much like,” said 
he, looking now at one hand and now at another as he produced a 
number of odds and ends before lighting upon the things he wanted, 
” to have your opinion upon some documents which 1 cut out of a 
morning newspaper, and must have stowed away somewhere with 
such uncommon carefulness that, dash my wig if I know where 
I’ve put ’em!” 

I wailed while he groped and slapped himself, and explored a 
weather beaten pocket-book. Finally, returning again to his 
waistcoat, he produced, with an air of triumph, three newspaper 
cuttings, which, after putting on a pair of spectacles to read them 
first himself, he handed to me one at a time. 

One was headed ” Thanks.” The writer said that he considered 
it a portion of his duty to publicly express his deep gratitude and 
tliat ot his surviving shipmates I’o Captain Towmshend and the 
crew of the bark M. J. Foley, ” who not only rescued us from a 
miserable death by frost and starvation, but did everything in their 
power, by the kindest possible treatment and self-sacrifice, to miti- 
gate our Intense suffering and supply eur many wants.” The writer 
added that nautical men would fully appreciate the meaning of the 
addition of nineteen persons to a small crew in the winter-time; 
“ but in this case my men were well fed, and we were sorry to be 
the means of every one being put on a limited supply of water.” 
The writer of this letter, brimful of honest, sailorly thanks, signed 
himself, ” Abraham Evans, chief officer of the late Bath City (s.).” 

My friend the ship-master kept his gaze attentively fixed upon 
me while 1 read this newspaper extract, and on my putting it down 
called out, ” Kindly now cast your eye over this document,” and 
handed me a second cutting. 

This was headed ” Elba, brig,” and was a request to be allowed 
to thank Captain Jacob Backer, of the Korwegiun bark Sarpen, 
for rescuing the eight men who signed the letter ” from our water- 


116 ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 

ioirgecl vessel, when only two pounds of putrid meat stood between 
us and starvation. He gave ns food, clothing, medicine, and every 
attendance, and was most ably seconded by his kind-hearted crew; 
and in the seven days we were on board his vessel he made ua in a 
great measure forget the privations we had undergone.” 

The third extract was of a similar character, signed by three sur- 
vivors of a crew of fourteen souls. 

” Well, sir,” said the ship-master, as 1 handed him back the third 
and last cutting, ” what do you think of these documents?” 

1 replied that they were expressions of gratitude honorable to the 
saved and to the savers, and that it was a pity such illustrations of 
the humjinity and gratitude ot seamen did not obtain more publicity 
than was generally given them, as not only was there nothing nobler 
in the world than the marine stories which the letters he had given 
me to read touchingly testified to, but that the interest of the sailor 
could never be better served than by landsmen again and a'gain 
dwelling upon the bitter perils of his vocation, and upon the scores 
of illustrations of the magnanimity and generosity of his simple 
heart. 

My friend the ship-master listened to me very attentively, as though 
I had given him a new view of the subject; but, shaking his head 
suddenly, as if to clear his mind of all matter that was not in it be- 
fore, he said, ‘‘Ay, it may be as you observe, and I’m not the man 
to tell you that sailors are likely to get more thau what they ought 
to want. The point’s this: If it’s a beautiful thing to read such 
pieces of gratitude as these documents contain, how much more 
beautiful would the reading of them be if it was to be known what 
impediments, that have grown up like mangrove-bushes from the 
lack of a proper Christian civilization to cut ’em down, a. ship’s 
captain has to contend with in order to gratify his instincts as a 
man of feeling and cr)mpassion. It’s all very well,” said he, strik- 
ing a match and holding a flame in the hollow of his hand as though 
a stiff breeze were blowing, ‘‘ for landsmen to read those letters of 
thanks and to feel touched, and to talk of the generosity of sailors 
and the like. Why — since the laws which govern folks are made 
ashore, and not at sea— why, after they’ve done wiping their eyes 
over the humble thanks poor sailors give to them who save their 
lives, don’t they turn-to and give a hand to the cause of humanity 
on the ocean by letting captains know that the laws of the British 
nation, anyway — leaving other countries out — will never let a man 
who does a noble act suffer for it as much, ay, and sometimes more 
than if he did a wrong? You hear of ships passing vessels in dis- 
tress-taking no notice— pushing on, as if in a hurry to get out ot 
sight. There is nothing in the marine reports which set my teeth 
more on edge than those yarns — nothing! but I’m master of a ship; 
I know the duties and responsibilities of that position. I’ve tried to 
do good, have hauled some fellow-mortals out of the very jaws of 
death, and have been so made to suffer for my humanity that when 
I think of it there comes into my mind a bitterness that makes me 
curse the ill-luck which drove me into the track of the sinking ship 
and her perishing crew. These are strong words, but if I don’t 
justify them you shall force me to eat ’em. Give me your attention 
for five minutes. I’ll try not to keep you longer: and if 1 should 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


117 


lose my temper and talk a bit stronger than you may think there’s 
need for, take no notice, but just quietly go on listening till I’ve 
done, and then should I fall a-swearing, maybe I’ll have got you 
into a frame of mind fit to join me. 

“ In the middle of last October my ship sailed from a certain port 
— there’s no need to give any names — in ballast, bound on a voyage 
across the Atlantic. The weather was promising enough for three 
•or four days after we got away; moderate, north easterly winds, 
which, crank as we were, enabled us to carry a foretop-mast studding- 
sail, and we drove along prettily enough, nothing happening to call 
for remark. But this sort of thing was too good to last ; accord- 
ingly, at midnight or thereabouts on the fifth day of sailing, 1 was 
roused by the mate, and hurrying on deck found halt a gale of wind 
blowing, everything in confusion, vessel almost on her beam-ends, 
everything let go, and as much shindy aloft as would furnisli out 
noise for a battle-field. It was a squall with a storm behind it. 
However, bit by bit we managed to roll up the canvas and save our 
spars, and when daylight broke we found ourselves under a lower 
maintop-sail, tumbling upon as savage a sea as was ever rolled up 
in a few' hours by a gale in the Atlantic. 

“ This was the beginning of a deal of delay. The gale kept us 
humbugging about in one place — allowing for that lee drift which 
you’ll expect of a ship in ballast— for hard upon a week; then bet- 
ter weather came. We shook out reefs, mast-headed the yards, and 
crawled a trifle to wind’ard; but the slant was a short one; auotlier 
gale came along and lasted three days; and so it went on, sometimes 
fine and most often foul, until at the end of thirty-six days we found 
ourselves a good dea] closer to Europe than we were to America. 

“ Well, sir, the thirty-seventh day proved moderate; a breeze 
from the W.N. W., a heavy sw'ell running to show that either a gale 
had been blowing or was coming, and pretty clear w'eather with a 
little glimnner of sunshine now and again streaming through the 
cloud- rifts; enough to Improve our spirits. I came on deck at half- 
past seven, and was taking a look at the w'eather and wondering if 
the swell that was making the ship roll like an empty cask was to 
signify more bother, when 1 was hailed by the mate, who sung out 
tlmt there was a (lark object upon the ivater, a point on the lee 
bow. 1 took the glass and made out the hull of a totally dismantled 
vessel— apparently a bark, but all that was left of her masts were 
three stumps barely showing above her tap-gallant bulwarks. She 
was water-logged— like a pjincake on the swell that hid her with 
every send; and after taking another look at her, and not doubting 
from her appearance that she was abandoned, 1 put the glass down, 
w'aterlogged vessels being by no means rare objects in the North 
Atlantic. 

“We were swarming along over the swell at about three to four 
knots an hour, and as we should pass the hulk pretty close to 
windward, 1 reckoned that if there was any poor miserable creature 
aboard her w'e were bound to see him as we drove by. However, I 
had scarcely put the glass down five minutes, and was standing 
looking over the tatfrail, when the mate again hailed me, and on 
my going to where he stood peering through the telescope, he put 
the glass into my hand, and told me to look yonder, for there was a 


118 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


boat full of men heading? directly for us. 1 looked, and sure enou^k 
saw a whole boat-load of human beings lifting and falling and 
coming toward us. It was more like an apparition than a real 
thing, for when 1 examined the wreck again I could not conceive 
how such a number of men had managed to keep by a hull which 
offered them no refuge aloft, and ovp.r whose decks the water rolled 
in shining masses, as she swung into the hollows. 

“ As the boat approached, we backed the mainyaids, and lay 
wailing for her to come along-side. By this time 1 could make out 
no less than fourteen men, and a sadder freight of human beings I 
never want to see again. Their white faces, their streaming clothes, 
their gaunt, hollow looks, the languid movement of the oars, and, 
above all, the manner in which those who rowed kept their faces 
turned toward us upon their shoulders, as it they feared we should 
vanish if the}’ did not keep their eyes fixed upon us, was a sight the 
most iron-hearted man could not hav3 viewed without pain and 
grief. We hove them the end of a rope and dragged the boat along- 
side; and I wanted no better assurance of the character of their 
sufterings and of the lamentable condition they were then in than 
their slow, weak motions as they caught the line, and got their oars 
in and stood up. One by one we lifted or helped them over the side 
— fourteen of them, sir. Some of them were too weak to answer 
our questions. My men took the seamen forward, holding them up 
as they walked, for they could scarcely use their limbs; and I car- 
ried the captain and the two mates into the cabin, where we fur- 
nished them with food and dry clothing, and then got them to bed. 

“All this while we remained hove-lo with the wreck bearing 
about a mile distant from us on our lee bow. My own crew con- 
sisted of eleven hands only, and the job of helping the rescued men 
forward had given them work enough until the poor fellows were 
below. I went on deck, and found the mate singing out to the 
hai?ds to swing the main-top sail and get way upon the ship. I 
stood looking on, full of thought. Presently the sails were trim- 
med, and I called the mate ovei to me. 

“ ‘ Do you know,’ said I, ‘ that we have been very nearly forty 
days at sea ? ’ 

“ ‘ Ay, sir,’ he answered, ‘ I know it only too w^ell.’ 

“ ‘ We’re provisioned, Mr. ,’ said I, giving him his name, 

*for one hundred and ten days, counting for our crew only. But 
if you add fourteen to eleven you get twenty-five, and that’s the 
number of people our provisions must now serve for.’ 

“Be grew ver}’- thoughtful, and took a long look round at the 
weather. 

“ ‘ I fear,’ continued 1, ‘ that it will merely be tempting Providence 
to pursue our voyage with all these extra men aboard in the face of 
the ill-luck that’s dogged us for near upon forty days. If we’re 
to make no more head- way than we’ve already done in the same 
time, I’m afraid,’ said I, pointing to the wreck that was slowly 
drawing abeam of us, ' we shall be as badly off here as if we turned- 
to and shipped ourselves aboard yonder hulk,’ 

“ ‘ That’ll be about it, sir,’ said he. ‘ The harness-cask, to say 
nothing of the scuttle butts, is much too small for fourteen extra 
hands, unless we’re to get a gale of wind astern of us.’ 


ROUXD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


119 


‘ Which we’ve got no right to expect,’ 1 answered. 

“ However, before 1 decided I thought I’d first take counsel v^ith 
the captain we had rescued, and, on his waking up rauch refreshed 
in tlie afternoon, I put my position before him, and asked him for 
bis opinion. He never hesitated when he heard how long we had 
been at sea and for liow many dnys we had been provisioned But 
I’m not sure that even his advice would have settled my resolution 
—for what can be more trying than to have to give up and go back, 
after beating about and toiling to get across for over a month?— had 
it not that same evening breezed up ahead with a stormy appear- 
ance. It was just as if the weather said, ‘ No, you don’t!’ I took 
a look, listened a moment or two at the men singing out as they 
clewed up the top gal hint sails, and then told the mate to get his 
helm over and head the ship for the homeward passage. 

“ Now, sir, though it was disagreeable enough to have to go back 
after consuming so much time in getting forward, 1 was a good deal 
comforted by reflecting upon the cause that was sending me home. 
It was a cheerful thing, likewise, to see tlie men who had come 
aboard half dead gradually recovering their health and spirits, and 
testifying their gratefulness by not only lending a hand with a will, 
but by striving to take all the work they could come at out of the 
hands of my crew. Besides, I will frankly own to you, sir, that 
1 was buoyed up by the belief that any money difficulty that must 
follow my useless trip into the Atlantic— useless I mean in the com- 
mercial sense of tliat word — would be in some degree met by the 
owners of the craft whose people I bad saved, and if not by them, 
then by the ‘ authorities ’ — a sort of strange people who come into 
one’s head when one falls into an expecting mood, and stop there as if 
they were real, and had all the disposition and power you fancy of 
’em, though to my mind there’s no illusion to equal ’em, and ne’er 
a word in the English dictionaries that makes a man fiercer to come 
across after he’s got, by writing letters and calling, to find out the 
true meaning of it. 

“ The nearest port was a French port, and there we arrived after 
a prettv cpiick run, and landed the rescued men, of whom I’ll say 
this — that their gratitude was such that if they could have turned 
their bodies into gold, so that we could have made sovereigns out 
of their flesh, they’d have done it cheerfully. Well, sir, after I 
rarrived in England, the first thing I did was to represent what I had 
done to the owners of the bark, whose crew I had saved. I told 
them that I had been obliged to abandon my voyage in consequence 
of the assistance 1 had rendered, and that by so doing I had not only 
lost a voyage, but consumed the whole of stores. No notice 
was taken of me; and when 1 complained to a friend who knows a 
good deal about the law, he said the wonder would have been if 
any notice had been taken, as I had no claim whatever on the own- 
ers of the bark for the rescue of the crew. 

“ ‘ But,’ said I, ‘ d’ye mean to tell me that there’s no Act of Par- 
liament no statute, no sort of general understanding, no kind of pro- 
vision, call it by what name you will— to protect a man from suf- 
fering heavily in his pocket because he goes out of his way to save 
fourteen human lives?’ 

“ ‘ No,’ says he. 


120 KOU2TD THE GALLEY FIKE. 

“ ‘ Aud must I,’ says 1, ‘be compelled to pay off my crew — 
which I’ve done— and ship another — also done — and accept a two- 
penny freight to the West Indies to enable me to reprovision my ship 
—all which I’ve had lo do-^with never a living being in this whole 
wide world made responsible, either as the manager of a fund set 
apart for such cnses, or as the owner of the wrecked vessel, or as 
the British Government itself whose business it should be lo encour- 
age acts of humanity shown to those sailors it’s always bragging 
about and leisurely looking after, for tlie loss I’ve been put to?’ 

“ ‘ Well,’ says he, ‘ on reflection, I think je might drop a line to 
the “ authorities ” ’—you know who he meant, sir: ‘ there’s a fund 
called the Mercantile Marine Fund, out of whicli, I think — mind, I 
only think— the “authorities” may if they think fit, pay a certain 
sum, whatever it be, in satisfaction of salvage where nothing more 
valuable has been saved than fourteen human lives.’ 

“ ‘ Well,’ says I, ‘ I’ll write to them;’ and so I did; and what 
do you think was the result?” 

I cannot imagine, I replied. 

“I got no answer,” said he. “1 got no answer,” he repealed, 
passionately: “ and there’s no more chance of my getting an answer 
than there is of — ” he paused, and added, “ I was going to say than 
there is of my stopping to pick up more shipwrecked mariners — 
but God forgive me for the fanc}’’! It’s not in my head, sir. But, 
putting all sentiment aside, wouldn’t you consider mine a bard 
case? And is my loss made the lighter to me because I am asked 
to reflect whether I ought to expect the authorities or the owners, 
or anybody else, to pay me for saving fourteen men from a dreadful 
death? Here, sir, you have one of the difiiculties — one of the hun- 
dred difficulties— master-mariners have to contend with, as little 
known to or understood by landsmen as Jack comprehends the busi- 
ness of an attorney. It’s not for me to suggest what should be 
done. But when next jmu hear of shipwrecked sailors being aban- 
doned by a passing ship, don’t be too quick to condemn the captain 
as a coward and a villain for leaving his fellow-beings to perish 
miserably, but say to yourself, ‘ His heart was with them, and he’d 
have saved them if he had dared; but British civilization said, what- 
ever you do you do at your owm risk. If no harm befalls you, 
good and well; you shall pass by, and nothing more be said or 
heard of your act; but if you lose money, don’t look to me,’ says 
British civilization, ‘ for the only answer you’ll get. will be that 
you’re an impudent fellow to expect to recover any loss you incur 
in the service of humanity;’ and so the skipper, knowing this to be 
true, sails away, holding that his wife and children at home must 
not be beggared that a perishing crew ma}’^ be rescued.” 

Thus speaking, my friend the ship master rose abruptly from his 
chair, pulled his hat down to his ears, and, impetuously wishing 
me good -day, left me to lapse into a very brown, 1 may almost say 
a very black, study. 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


1:^1 


8MA GK APPRENTICES. 

** 1 don’t know wbat country he hailed from, I’m sure; but, thank 
the Lord, he wasn’t an Englishman,” said a smacksman, in the 
most fervent manner, to me the other day, speaking of Osmond 
Otto Brand, who was executed on the 23d. of May for the murder 
of an apprentice named William Papper or Pepper. At any other 
lime than this I believe the story of that miscreant’s bf.rbarity 
would have deeply stirred the public mind; but of late days * n.ur- 
der has become a common thing, much talked of and freely prac- 
ticed. People’s capacity of being horrified gets dulled by iter;ition 
of shocking ne^vs, and the significance of any one item in a biood- 
Ted catalogue loses value as a particular impression. "Whitever 
effect, however, may have been produced by Brand’s dime on the 
laj mind outside the district where the murderer and his victim were 
known, there can be no doubt of the impression it has made upon 
smack-owners and smacksmen all round the coast. There is 
scarcely a fishermen who has not the horrible story off by heart, 
who does not view the atrocious cruelties practiced by the foreign 
smack-master as a foul disgrace to the fishing industries, and tvho 
does not indignantly lament that the men who helped Brand to 
slowly kill the miserable apprentice were not hanged along with 
their skipper. One result of Brand’s crime was to cause some ques- _ 
tions to be asked in the House of Commons. There was also some 
talk about the whole subject of fishing apprentices being considered 
by Government If it is to be dealt with it will be as well, perhaps, 
first to give the Hull murder time to drop out of memory. To adopt 
it as a text for legislation would assuredly be to mislead honorable - 
members who voted without looking very deep into the matters on 
which their opinions are challenge. If the condition of the smack 
apprentice is an improvable feature of current life, it is not so 
merely because Brand slowly tortured Pepper to death. We must 
shelve all thoughts of that murder, and ask questions without the ^ 
least reference to it. What is the life of a fishing apprentice at sea 
What is it ashore How is he fed and clothed? What is the nature 
of his relations with the owners’ interests? What is the average 
character of the men with whom he is thrown? These and other 
questions I will endeavor to answer from inquiries I have made into 
the inner or hidden part of the lives of a body of lads of whom the 
public know less than they know of any other kind of seafaring _ 
people. 

I once wrote an account of a voyage in a smack in the ISTorth Sea. 
One such journey is enough for a lifetime, and the recollection of it 
makes me here declare— and 1 am sure there is not a sailor living who 
will contradict me — that of all the several forms of seafaring life 
there is absolutely none comparable in severity, exposure, hardship, 
and stern peril to that of the smacksman. His vessel is a small one; 


* 1882 , 


122 


BOUND Tirii GALLEY EIRE. 


his cabin a little darksome hole; his working hours are full of harsh 
toil; he has to give battle to llie wildest weather, to struggle on for 
bread through storm and snow and frost, through the long black- 
ness of the howling winter’s night, through the gray wilderness of 
a foamine ocean swept by winds as pHiless as the hand of death. 
No legislation can alter these conditions of his life. Pl)ilanthropy 
will have its cod and sole and turbot. Tliefish must be caught, but 
caught in such a manner that those who shoot their trawls for them 
catch otlier things besides— a wild roughness of bearing, a defiance 
of civilized instincts, a sense of outlawed and neglected life that 
brings with it a fixed conviction of social immunity. “ I’m a fisher- 
man myself, sir,” a man once said to me; “ and I’ll allow that there 
are many well-mannered, sober, steady men among us: but, taking 
us all round, you’ll not find a coarser set of human beings in the 
world; and. if you want to know the reason, you’ve only got to 
look at yonder smack, lieading away into the Nqrth Sea, where, 
may be, she’ll be heaving and tossing about for weeks, with ne’er a 
proper influence in the shape of books or company for the men to 
come at,” 

Take, now, the fishing apprentice. He comes to this severe, 
coarse life, himself most often of the coarsest. He is fresh from a 
reformatory, from a union, or, w'orse still, from the gutter^ His 
associates are men who were themselves apprentices; lads who came 
one knows not from where— the refuse of the street, manufactured 
into marine objects by the owner’s boots, and breeches, and coats; 
and hammered into sprawling, unwieldy smacksmen by the hard 
blows of their calling. They know all about dandy-bridles and 
twarl-warps; but they do not know how to read, and they do not 
know how to write, and they do not know how to think. Their 
home iff the public-house when ashore, and they take the morals of 
that sort of home to sea with them. The apprentice comes among 
them, gets knocked about, picks up their oaths and their shore 
theories, and imitates them masterfully enough to be able to hand 
on their conditions with an added flourish, when he is out of his 
lime and has boys under him to swear at. Now, what is legislation 
going to do here? You have the roughest life in the world; the 
roughest lads in the world recruit its ranks. What is to be done, 
short of what a few philanthropists are endeavoring to do, to pre- 
vent them from being the roughest men in the world? 1 cannot see 
that the smack-owners are to blame. They must have apprentices. 
They will lake the best of such boys as they can get; and it is really 
carrying idealism too high to expect that these men, who have to 
wmrk hard themselves, who have to be down among their vessels, 
seeing that their men do not run away, that they are properly en- 
gaged in preparing fpr the voyage, and so forth; I say you cannot 
expect that these men, who come home of a night tired out, should 
turn school-master and parson to their apprentices, and set them to 
moral jobs, when they are ready to abscond — with their master’s 
clothes also— if they are not allowed their evening out after being 
at work all day up to their knees in mud, scrubbing the vessel’s bot- 
tom. 

No one with any knowledge of the smack-owner’s calling, of his 
hardly earned money, of his risks and anxieties, will envy him 


KOUJSri) THE GALLEY FIRE. 


123 

Boys are boys all the world over, and that smack-boys should be 
peculiarly troublesome is not hard to account for on reference to 
their antecedents— that is, the antecedents ot most ot them. “ The 
law has come between us and the boys,” was said to me. “and 
makes our case harder than it was. We have no remedy now. 
Time was when we could send a constable after a lad when he was 
off; but the law has stopped that. We have got to wait a couple of 
day*, and then apply for a warrant, by which time the boy's t’other 
end of England. Take the case of a vessel about to start. A boy 
refuses to turn-to. I’m on tlie spot, and call a policei\^an, and in 
his presence repeat the order. Boy still refuses. Policeman then 
walks him off afore a magistrate, who fines him, and I have to pay 
the fine it 1 want to get the vessel to sea; for if 1 don’t pay then the 
boy’s locked up, and the vessel detained two or three days while 
I’m seeking another boy.” The hardship is clear enough, though 1 
for one should be heartily sorry to see it rectified by a return to the 
old and brutal system ot locking up lads in jail at the will ot the 
smack-owner. 

Let me briefly place the caseot the owners before you with regard 
to their apprentices. To begin with, the lads come from all parts, 
as I have said, and are bound apprentice for terms ot three, five, or 
six years. If bound by institutions such as workhouses, reforma- 
tories, and the like, a certain sum ot money is paid with them — in 
some cases £10, enough to purchase an outfit. 1 asked a smack- 
owner what he reckoned to be the average j’^early cost of a lad’s 
clothes, and he said £8. ” A pair of sea- boots alone,” said he, 
” cost £1 165,” Boys, however, when they first go to sea do not 
get sea-boots, but “ bluchers,” the cost of which is about 125. a pair. 
When the lads are in harbor the smack-owmer has to house them. 
In many instances they sleep in his owm liouse, or in lodgings pro- 
vided for them. If they do not take their meals with their masters 
they live as well, dining from the same joint and getting much the 
same fare as he has for tea and breakfast. 

There may be exceptions to this; but it is a practice so general 
that it may be taken as a rule. When ashore the owners also keep 
the boys furnished with a little pocket-money. The lad, for in- 
stance, who acts as cook at sea gets, when in harbor, 6c?. a night, 
the deck-boy M., and the third-hand apprentice l5. These pay- 
ments are made during what is termed “settling time;” but in 
addition to this money, the owner gives them the small fish caught 
during the voyage, called “ stocker-bait,” the produce ot which yields 
each lad an average sum ot l5. a week all the year round. While 
in port the apprentice’s work mainly consists in scrubbing the ves- 
sel’s bottom, touching her up with the paint-brush, preparing nets 
for the next voyage, etc. At sea the lesser duties are assigned him. 

Suppose a smack carries three boys; the youngest will probably 
act as cook. When the net is hove up his post is in the hold, where 
he coils away the trawl-warp, which done he returns to his cooking. 
The deck-boy’s post is on deck when the men are below taking their 
meals. He steers the vessel in the morning until noon, or 12.30; 
(hen gets his dinner and turns in. The duty of a third-hand ap- 
prentice is that of a man. fie is commonly within two years ot his 
time; and, though he is still an apprentice, he is generally treated 


HOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


124 

as a well seasoned and fully developed smacksman. Talking? 
recently with a body of smacii-boys, I asked Uiem what sort of grub 
they not aboard. 

“ Good enough, master.” 

“ What do you have for breakfast?” said I. 

‘‘ Well, we has the choice of tea or coffee or cocoa; we has roast 
fish and butter and soft tack~as long as it’ll last— and then we has 
biscuit.” 

” And what do you get for dinner?” 

‘‘Why, fresh and corned beef fo» a spell; and when that’s ate 
up we has fish, and snet-piidden, and cabbage— as long as it lasts — 
and carrots and parsnips when they’re in, and ’taties.” 

” And your lea?” 

*' Tea’s the same as breakfast.” 

” Do you get any supper?” 

‘‘ Ay, master, ’twixt eleven and one, ’cording as the watch is 
called, we has cheese and pickles and biled fish, or if there’s any 
cold meat left we has that.” 

When it is considered where these lads come from, this fare is 
scarcely of a kind to justify them in grumbling and running away. 
Indeed, ot all seafarers, smacksmen live the best. AYhen Jack is 
gnawing upon a piece of junk, and knocking his biscuit upon the 
deck to get the worms out ot it, the fisherman is regaling himself 
wiih the best of the produce of his trawls, or fattening himself on 
hearty fresh beef and— if it be Sunday- on good plum-duff. The 
apprentice fares just the same. And even in other ways he is bet- 
ter off than if he were in a ship’s forecastle, as, for instance, in the 
matter of clothes — the owner being obliged to keep him \vell fur- 
nished in that respect, and to equip him with garments a hundred- 
fold warmer and better than those which most sailors take to sea 
with them. The whole truth is, so far as 1 can judge, the comfort 
and happiness and prospects of the smack apprentice depend upon 
his own conduct. 

Owners, like all other employers of labor, want the best liand& 
they can get, and smacksmen are glad to have smart and willing 
lads along with them. It is a rough life — the whole marine calling 
is a rough life, and there is none rougher than a fisherman’s. If a 
boy is dull and slow, obstinate and sulky, he will be shoved and 
kicked about, and that would be his lot in any ship he went aboard 
of; but it a boy is willing, does his beat, lends a hand cheerfully, 
and is a steady lad, then he will be well treated, the men will like 
him, the owner favor him, ftnd before long he will find himself in 
command. He has inducements to persevere^and behave well, such 
as no other ship-boy gets that I know' of; for if he has served his 
time honestly, and shown such promise as the smack-owner wants 
to see, then, when he is out of his time, he is furnished with £20 
•w'orth ot clothes, and a sovereign or two for his pocket. I am aware 
that all smack-owners are not so liberal, and I have heard of some 
men sending their apprentices, when out of their time, adrift in the 
clothes they stood up in, and forcing them to seek work from other 
masters. But the rule is to treat a good lad liberally when out ot 
Ids time. 


KOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 125 

Whoever has examined into the fishing industry must he well 
aware that smack-owners have substantial cause ot grievance in re- 
spect ot their treatment by their apprentices. An owner told me 
that a boy came to him for a berth; the lad was in rags and starving, 
and so filthy that the owner would not send him to his house where 
his apprentices were. He walked with him to the Sailor’s Home, 
had him bathed and scrubbed and fed, paid nearly a pound tor him 
for seven days at the Home, purchased tor him some clothes that 
cost over £2, and then on the morning ot the day on which the ves- 
sel was to sail the boy ran away, and the smack had to be detained 
until another lad could be shipped. Instances of such behavior are 
numerous, and might really account tor, it they should not jnstity, 
a very much harsher discipline and sterner kindot treatment than I 
have been able to discover. For always let us remember that the 
smack-owner has, as a rule, been a fisherman himselt, gone through 
the mill, suffered all the hardships ot the life, and, though ashore, 
has to work harder for his living than ever he did when at sea. He 
is in this position, that he is only able to insure for total loss. He 
belongs to a club whose members subscribe in proportion to the 
number of vessels they severally enter. “ Only yesterday,” said a 
smack-owner, ‘‘one of my vessels came in; she had lost fifteen 
fathom of warp, two main-bridles, dandy-bridle, trawl-warp tackle, 
two trawl-heads, a trawl-beam, a ground-rope, mortices, head-line, 
and other gear. I have to bear all that. 

“There is Mr. . In one night of storm his loss amounted, 

in insurance of other vessels which had foundered, to £245, together 
with eight sets of gear, valued at £60 a set.” It is a vocation full 
ot risk; scores of men ma}" be beggared by a gale; and, seeing the 
important part that smack apprentices play in the fishing interests, 
it is reasonable that we should surv^ the question from every point 
ot view betore hastily forming conclusions on the basis of such an 
incident as that of the recent Hull atrocity. Ot course there are 
savages and bullies among smacksmen, as there are the whole wide 
world over whether among landgoers or seafarers. But whatever 
might have been the slate of things in former days, I do not believe 
that, at the present time, there is halt the ill-usage to be found 
aboard smacks that I know exists at sea in other kinds of vessels. 

The crime of the murderer Brand necessarily gives a malignant 
coloring to every smack-master’s report of having lost a bo}" by 
drowning while at sea: but the old salt fuaxim, “A fisherman’s 
walk, three steps and overboard,” should go a long way in explana- 
tion of many of the disasters that befall smack-boys. An accident 
aboard a smack happens in a breath; a lad dips over the side for a 
bucket of water, the vessel is sailing fast, the bucket pulls the lad 
over the rail, and he is astern and drowned before the fellow at the 
tiller can sing out. Or a boy goes to look over the stern to see the 
white water running away, the boom jibes and flings him into the 
sea. I should very gravely question whether a deliberate murder 
could be done^without some one of the men reporting it. No doubt 
black deeds liave been perpetrated in fishing-smacks. For instance, 
a story is told of a Jad who was frying .some fish; through his neg- 
lect the fish were Imrnt, whereupon the skipper, smelling the 
fumes, bundled below, seized the boy's hands, and thrust them into 


ROUXD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


126 

the boilinp^ fat. The instant he was released, thebo}" rushed on deck 
and flun." himself overboard, and was drowned. 

One might conceive of a man hating another and jogging him 
into the sea on a dark night. But the statistics of loss of life 
among smacksmen and smack apprentices at sea must reduce such 
dreadful possibilities to a very small number; and of that small 
number- it is rare indeejl to find one to which any better basis can be 
furnished than suspicion. So far as the professional life of the 
smack apprentice goes— his treatment at sea. his food, his clothes, 
and the like — it is difficult to guess, having regard to the unavoida- 
ble roughness and hardship of ^his calling, how his position is to be 
impro'J'ed. You cannot make* a drawing-room of a smack; there 
will be always hard work and hard words where there is hard 
weather, and there is not much hope of polished airs and genteel 
behavior among a race of men who sleep in holes at which a black 
beetle might stand aghast; and who are boxed up for many months 
together in the year in a bit of a fabric whose forecastle is full of 
raffle, and whose hold is full of dead fish. But ashore no doubt 
someching may be done for the lads to advance them morall}'' and 
make real men of them when they come to be men. 

It would he well if there were a few more Smack-boys’ Homes 
than there are. There is one in Ramsgate, the theory of which is 
exceedingly good. The manager writes to a school or reformatory 
for boys, the conditions of acceptance being that the lads are 
healthy and strong and of good character; also that enough money 
be paid down to furnish each youth with a fishing outfit and a Sun- 
day suit. The boys being got together, in this fashion, the smack- 
owners are asked to take apprentices from them. This many of 
them do, I believe, on the understanding that the boys lodge at the 
Home when in port at a cost 'of 2s. a day each. By this means 
the lads are brought under a certain moral influence. They are 
watched over by the clergy associated with the Home, attend serv- 
ice in a chapel ti’.at adjoins the building, and are provided with the 
means of harmlessly amusing themselves in the evenings. The sole 
objection is— and it is a commercial one — the expensiveness of the 
arrangement to smack-owners who have several apprentices. “ If 
1 had but one apprentice,” said an owner, 2s. a day would be 
cheap enough; but 1 have ten, who at 2s. a day per boy would be a 
good deal dearer to me at the Home than 1 find them in my own 
house.” This is a point 1 will pot deal with, but in all other re- 
spects 1 know of nothing that can be advanced against Smack-boys’ 
Homes. 

Smacksmen make fine sailors; the navy and the merchant service 
ought to have no better recruiting field than the British fisheries, 
and therefore something of Imperial significance should enter into 
consideration of the smack-boy’s moral and material welfare. You 
are not going fo make him a refined person, but you can teach him 
to write and read, to have a reverence for God, to think of himself 
as a responsible being. An early training of this kind will not im- 
pair his hardiness, but it will put him higher than he is as a human 
creature. The lower orders of smack-owners let him run loose of 
a night when he is ashore; he is quite uncared for, and in the prison 
days he passed a good deal more of his time in jail than at sea. 


^ HOUND THU GALLEY FIRE. 


127 


“ Makine: every allowance for second or third convictions,” says 
the Rev. J. E. Brennan, of Ramsgate, writing in 1878, ” vve are not 
far from the truth in stating that fifty per cent of these boys go to 
prison during some x^art of their service.” These incessant punish- 
ments naturally led people to infer the worst of the fishing life. 
“ Think what a calling it must be,” they would say, “ when boys 
actually beg to be sent to prison rather than on board these 
smacks.” But Mr. Brennan justly,! think, attributes the lads’ 
defection to their neglected condition, to the absence of all suitable 
guardianship. “The scenes of drunkenness and sin,” he writes, 
“ of which some of these lads are cognizant! will not describe. Let 
it suffice to say that many a pure-minded boy has in a few months 
become utterly corrupted, and his character, it may be, utterly 
ruined forever.” He is writing of the boys of one town; but his 
remarks are equally, and even more, applicable to such places as 
Grimsby and Hull and Yarmouth. 

Here, then, is the real evil. !t is not that the boys are maltreated 
at sea to any extent outside the proverbial rough usage of the marine 
life; it is not that smack-owners — the majority of them certainly — 
do not feed and clothe them well, nor that they exact unreasonable 
share of labor from them; it is that, when ashore and during the 
evenings, they wander about, fall intb bad company, acquire habits 
of intemperance, become unspeakable nuisances to the police, to 
the inhabitants, and to their own masters, run. away, and leave 
owners in the lurch, and practically now without redress: and so, 
in a large proportion of instances, end in becoming untrustworthy 
men, worthless sailors, people whom nobody will employ. Smack- 
owners, as ! have said, cannot be expected to look aher the morals 
of the lads; their hands are full of business, they come home 
wearied, and, even with the best will in the world, they must lack 
in ways it would take too much space to explain here the oppor- 
tunities to care tor the bo 5^8 as they are cared for at a Home. 'What 
is really wanted is a Home wherever there are fishing apprentices, 
an institution conducted with something of the self-sacrificing spirit 
that characterizes the Ramsgate Home; where the boys can bo 
comfortably housed and tended at a small expense to their em- 
ployers; where they may be educated and helped and rewarded for 
their merits as seafaring lads; and any one truly concerned in. the 
■w'elfare of our mercantile marine, and who holds that we should 
neglect no source from which we may derive the forces that keep 
our nat'ion dominant upon the sea, 'will believe that the State could 
make no wiser disbursement than in helping in tlie establishment of 
such institutions, and contributing to them until they become self- 
supporting. 


ORA VESEND. 

I NEVER pass Gravesend without thinking of poor Mrs. Henry 
Fielding’s dreadful toothache, and the trouble her husband and the 
surgeon, “ the best reputed operator in Gravesend,” took to per- 
suade the sutfering lady to keep the hollow tooth a liltle longer. To 
what extent has the old town changed since ihe author of “ Tom 
Jones ” surveyed it from the deck of the little old vessel that carried 


128 


liOUiTD THE GALLEY EIRE. 


him to Lisbon to die there? Much should have happened in a hun- 
dred and thirty 5’ears ; yet in one respect Gravesend remains un- 
altered; it is still, so (o speak, the same old point of nautical de- 
parture; ships still “ drop” down abreast of it, and bring up to 
receive their passengers; and .yet it remains the one spot of English 
soil which, when left astern, makes you feel that the great ocean is 
all before you, and that your voyage has commenced indeed. But 
is not human nature the same in all ages? Fielding’s description of 
sitting at dinner and being startled by the bowsprit of ” a little ship 
called a codsmack” driving in through the cabin window, and his 
account of the sea-blessings showered upon each other by the crews 
of the two vessels, might stand for a picture of to-day’s river life. 

It is difficult,” he says, ” 1 think, to assign a satisfactory reason 
why sailors in general should, of all others, think themselves entire- 
ly discharged from the common bands of humanity, and should 
seem to glory in the language and behavior of savages.” Hisopinion 
of Jack as a gentleman was not ill-founded. But what would he think 
now if living, and, with the memory in him of his uncouth sea- 
swab of a skipper (who, to the delight of posterity, fell upon his 
knees at last and begged Fielding to forgive him), he should step on 
board the four-thousand-ton steamer that lay abreast of Gravesend, 
with blue-peter at her masthead, on the day I happened to find my- 
self in that town? 

Not much imagination is needed, 1 think, to extinguish the mon- 
ster fabrics which day after day lie floating motionless abreast of 
Gravesend, and refurnish the broad and quivering stretch of waters 
with the marine phantoms of olden times. The Indiaman of five 
hundred tons is viewed with astonishment at her prodigious 
dimensions as she lies straining at her hempen cable, the sunshine 
sparkling in the big windows which embellish her huge quarter- 
galleries, her stern towering out of the water like a castle, a won- 
drous complication of head-boards and massive timbers distinguish- 
ing her bows, long streamers whipping from every mast-head, and 
TOWS of cannon bristling along her tall, weather-tossed sides. You 
have little pinks, and snows, and cutters of fifty tons burden which 
have made part of a convoy from the West Indies, and have out- 
weathered the heavy Atlantic surges as bravely as any Cunard liner 
of to-day does. Here, too, are colliers, ‘‘ships of great bulk,” 
Fielding calls them, though there is scarcely a skipper of an old 
boom-foresail Anna Maria or John and Susan now afloat who 
would not hold them capacious only as long-boats. To appreciate 
all that the present means, you must step back and then look ahead. 
Only the other day 1 saw a Blackwall liner towing up the river. It 
is not so very long ago when that ship would have been thought a 
wonderfully large vessel. Handsome she is, with her painted ports 
and frigate-like look, though her main royal-mast was uncomforta- 
bly stayed aft when 1 saw her, and she wants a prettier stem-piece; 
but, as to her size, she seemed little more than a toy as she swam 
past the line of huge towering iron hulls. You think of the scene 
of the river as Fielding surveyed it; then as you remember it twenty 
years since; then as you see it now, and your wonder is. What will 
the end be should the end ever arrive? What will be the bulk and 
yastne&s of the fabrics in the good time coming? 


129 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 

“ The new docks,” said a waterman to me, pointing: across the 
river with a finger like a roll of old parchment, ” are to start from yon- 
der pint, and end right aways down there;” and the sweep of his 
finger seemed to embrace some leagues ot the opposite low, flat, 
treeless, and mud-colored shore. Assuredly all that can be given 
will be wanted. Our marine giantesses are multiplying faster than 
they drown ; and it seemed to me that there was something prophetic 
in my waterman’s finger when he made the gesture ot it to signify 
miles instead ot acres. But many changes must take place and a 
long time elapse before Gravesend loses its old distinctive tradition 
as a point of departure. Think of the thousands ot eyes which have 
grown dim as they watched the old town veer away astern, and ot 
tile thousands of hearts which have leaped in transport as from 
mouth to mouth the cry has gone round, ” Gravesend is in sight!” 
No other place — 1 am speaking, ot course, of vessels bound 
Thames-wise — gives one such a sense of home as this. Jack may 
have the English coast in view pretty nearly the whole way from 
the Isle of Wight as high as the South Foreland; he may bring up 
in the Downs, and have Deal and Walmer close aboard, and hear 
the church-bells ringing, and seefthe people walking on the beach; 
he may take his fill of Ramsgate and Margate as he rounds the great 
headland; but somehow or other it is not until Gravesend has hove 
in sight, and he sees the shipping abreast of it, and the river curving 
into Northfleet Hope, that Jack feels home is reached at last; that 
the voyage is as good as over, and that in a few hours the noble ship 
that has carried him in safety through storm and calm, through 
sunshine and blackness, will be at rest, silent as the trrave, as 
though, after the long and fitful fever of the deep, she was sleeping 
well. 

These are the gayer thoughts, for they come with the hurricane- 
chorus that breaks "from the forecastle of yonder ship as her crew 
get the anchor, now that the first of the flood has come, and the 
tug along-side is all ready to forge ahead and tauten the liawser. 

Oh, when we get to the dockyard gates!” shout the poor fellows 
gleefully, with as much voice as a voyase from San Francisco has left 
in them; and you think that to-night there will be some middling salt 
and tough yarns spun in more than one grog-shop, wdiile already 
Jack’s most unlovely Nan— as Charles Dickens only too truthfully 
described her— is overhauling her few penn’orlhs ot finery in an- 
ticipation of the treats which are to be got out of a fund made up ot 
JE8 10s. a month. 

But Gravesend appeals most from the other side of the picture— 
the outward-bound side. I was favored with an immense illustra- 
tion of this. A big steamer, with a black-and-white funnel, lay 
abreast of the Gravesend pier, with her decks literally choked with 
emigrants; She should have sailed the day before, 1 was told; but 
the emigrants — mainly foreigners — had rebelled; declared they had 
been promised a steamer belonging to another company, and refused 
to start in the vessel they were packed aboard ot. Some one on the 
Gravesend pier told me that a thousand people had been put into 
her that morning. There was hardly room for a pin along the bul- 
warks. Clustering masses of human Leads blackened the rail, as 
though all the crows in Kent had swooped down upon that great 
5 


130 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 

iron steamship, and were taking their ease upon her sides, T had 
no excuse to board her, but 1 managed to gather a good idea of her 
living freight by taking a boat and pulling round lier. I liad seen 
a very similar class of foreign emigrants in a North-country port, 
and had made a short voyage in company with five or six hundred 
of them, but that crowd did not impress me as this did. 

There was something very pathetic and melancholy In the post- 
ures and looks of this large concourse- of people, wlio overhung 
the water, and gazed, with little of movement among them, at the 
shores on either hand. The thought of this mass of human souls 
afloat on the deep with nothing between them and eternity but a 
thin surface of iron, combined with the speculations as to the 
future into which the mind was irresistibly impelled; the new lands 
which awaited them; the long-- perhaps everlasting — separation 
from their mother country; the numberless interests they repre- 
sented; and the rapid growth of that amazing Western Empire, 
whose humanizing and civilizing progress was strangely illustrated 
by the embarkation of this immense assembly— the freight of a 
single ship, too!— tor its ports, contributed to make the picture of 
the Holland— iov that was the namonof the steamer— a truly impress- 
ive and memorable one. 

It w'as a warm, sunny afternoon; far down the Hope, trending 
northwise athwart Gravesend lieach, w^ere the white heights of 
Cliffe, sparkling like marble in the brilliant radiance; the long 
stretch of water was crowded with shipping, whose bunting and 
variously colored sides filled the eye with color; Gravesend lay in 
a heavy mass of grouping close down to the w’^ater’s edge, with a 
number of huddled houses to the right of the new^ Falcon Hotel, 
here and there a window flashing back the simliaht, and the church- 
bell ringing a pleasant farewell to a Peninsular and Oriental 
steamer, wdiose head was being canted toward the north shore by a 
tug that she might have a clear road before her engines w^ere set in 
motion; while, some distance up the river, vessels which had passed 
Gravesend twenty minutes before were fading upon the bluish haze 
of smoke from tall chimneys and fog from the marshes, the spars 
of the Blackwall liner looming huge and vague above the land 
which concealed her hull. 

The very beauty of the picture furnished an element of melan- 
choly to the crow'ded steamship, and the rows upon rows of fa(;es 
which were all steadily gazing landward, I watched the Peninsular 
and Oriental steamer get under way, and contrasted her with the 
emigrant ship. The big deck-house or saloon of the former, with 
the two funnels rearing out of it, gave her, to my eye. a somewhat 
heavy look forward; but it was something to remember to run the 
eye from her almost unpeopled decks — nobody to be seen but some 
men in uniform on the bridge, a Lascar in a turban squatting in the 
after-awning, holding a little white flag in his hand, and one or two 
figures in the forward part of the ship— to the motionless black 
hull of the emigrant steamer, teeming with life, and the bulwarks 
literally creeping wuth faces. It is a responsible thing to carry 
mails, to be answerable for a mass of specie, and for the lives of a 
number of gentlemen and la-dies; but think of standing on the 
deck of a steamer on a (krk night, and reflecting that under your 


ROUN'D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


131 


feet lie sleeping a thousand human beings, not counting your crew, 
and that the very existence of this vast company of fellow-creatures 
depends upon your vigilance, judgment, skill as a seaman. 

I believe the sympathy and wonder of any man who saw that 
crowded vessel, and gave attention to the sight, would have gone 
to the captain, to the seaman who was to hold all those lives in his 
hand, so to speak. Who would willingly accept such a responsi- " 
bility? and who, finding men equal to the discharge of these 
enormous trusts, would not gladly lend a hand to smooth their path 
for them by denouncing and demanding the removal of whatever 
unfairly obstructs and harasses them— the action of unjustly con- ^ 
stituted courts, the decisions of empirics, and of people who could' 
not tell the difference between a gin block and a dead-eye, the 
iniquities of the modern ship-building yard and the hundred small 
red-tape worries which make the ship-master’s life a burden to 
him ashore? 

How much Gravesend is a point of arrival and departure 1 was 
reminded as 1 stood overhanging the stone projection and looking 
down on the landing-steps. From a large sailing-ship towing up 
the river a waterman’s boat shot away and made for the Gravesend 
pier. In it was a middle-aged man, bronzed with the suns and winds 
of four months, and dressed in clothes which it scarcely needed a - 
tailor to guess were of an Antipodean cut. His luggage was heaped 
about him in the bottom of the boat. I watched him land, and 
followed him as he came up the steps, when a rush was made 
by a little group of people dressed in mourning, and in a breath a 
woman, tossing up her black veil, was in his arms and sobbing on ' 
his shoulder. Those somber garments threw a shadow upon the 
happiness of this meeting; but still, he had come back; he was 
well; and by and by the dead, never to be forgotten, let us hope, - 
would be buried indeed, and the living heart re-assert itself. The 
watermen seemed to know when that ship had left her port on the 
other side of the world, and so I found that this man had been four 
months in making his way to England, And how much longer 
had he been absent? But then think of the glory of the green trees 
and fragrant beauties of our English May to this traveler, fresh " 
from one hundred and twenty days of salt-water! Figure the flavor 
he will find in a cut from a prime sirloin! the sweetness of “ soft 
lack ” — ay, even such bread as is now baked— after the bilious little 
bits of dough manufactured in the galley by the baker, and sent 
aft under the satirical title of “ rolls!” 

Scarcely had the sunburnt man and his friends disappeared, when 
there came a little figure that 1 could not view without lively con- 
cern and compassion. This was a small midshipman, resplendent 
in the newest of uniforms. The buttons glittered on his tiny jacket, 
and the brand-new badge on his cap shone like a freshly minted 
sovereign. There lay his ship a short way down the stream — a 
.good-looking iron vessel, very long and very narrow, without an 
fnch of that ” swell of the sides ” one loves to see, as 1 had taken 
police when she slewed on her heel to the first of the flood and gave 
us a view of herself end on, with double top-galJant yards, sk 3 'sail 
poles, and the capacity for an immense spread ot lower cloths. The 
poor little chap took a long squint at his new home, and then a 


132 


EOUXD THE GALLEY FILE. 


peep at tlie lady along-side of him, whom, from the strong family 
likeness between them, I reckoned at once to be his mamma. She 
had been crying, her eyes were red, but she looked at her youngster 
with a kind of quivering smile now, lor it would clearly not do to 
capsize his sensibilities at this most trying point. He had insisted 
upon going to sea, no doubt, much against poor mamma’s will. 
He had tine notions of the marine calling’ I dare say, all acquired 
by days and nights of study of nautical romances; and here he was^ 
ready to sail away, handsomely brass-bound, mamma, red-e 3 "ed, at 
his side, bravely fighting with her heart. Hundreds of men have 
gone through this, and something betwixt a laugh and a sigh will 
come from them when they think of this little brass-bounder and 
look back to their first voyage. 

■VVhat ideas had the young fellow formed of the life? But, alas! 
what mariner has not allowed his boyhood to gull him in the same 
way? “ There is,” says Dana, a “witchery in the sea, its songs 
and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship and the sailor’s dress, 
especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies 
and fiil merchantmen than all the press-gangs in Europe. 1 have 
known a young man with such a passion for the sea that the very 
creaking of a block stirred his imagination so that he could hardly 
keep his feet upon dry ground.” These sentences recurred to me 
as 1 watched the little midshipman. But for how many days was 
the spell of the ocean’s witchery to lie upon him? Probably, if 
they had head-winds down Channel, he would be sick of the life, 
and longing to be ashore in a warm bed, with his mother to tuck 
him up, and a good breakfast to go down-stairs to next morning, 
before they were abreast of the Start. “ Oh, my golly!” said a 
negro whom 1 met at Gravesend, selling flowers, “ S’elp me, sah, 
as I Stan’ here, I’d gib dis basket, yas sah, 1 would, and all de close 
horfif my back, tor a good blow-out of lobscousel” But that little 
middy will have to be a black man if he wants to enjoy sea-fare 
as my negro friend did. A few days ot dark and evil-looking pork, 
and salt beef out of which he might cut models of ships for his 
friends at home, and “ duff ” made of copper skimmings, not to 
mention the being routed out in his watch below, and having to 
tumble up aloft in a night blind with storm and rain, are pretty 
sure to disillusion him. But his buttons are new, and his hopes 
are young and fresh; there is no tarnish ot salt water on either as 
yet; so let him take his mother’s yearning, passionate kiss, and 
bundle into ihe boat and be off. She could not bear to see him row 
awav, and the moment he went down the steps she hurried off, 
while he, to show wdiat a man he w’as, squatted himself in the 
stern sheets, and pulled out a short wmoden pipe and lighted it. In 
a few minutes he was out in the stream. 1 watched him get along- 
side his ship, Hot up the gangway ladder, and vanish in a kind of 
twinkling ot new' brass and gilt over the side. 

It is these constant comings and goings wdiich give Gravesend 
its interest and its memories. One hour it is a party of people 
newly arrived from the bottom of the w'orld; another, it is a couple 
ot drunken firemen tumbling into a boat and shoving off for some 
lump ot a steamer that lies abreast of the Obelisk or Denton Mill. 
But, in spite ot the heaps of nautical conditions which beset it, 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


133 


Gravesend cannot be called wholly marine. It may be thought 
fishy, but it certainly is not salt. Contrast it with Deal, which it 
resembles in its lower streets. The wind may pipe never so merrily, 
but there is no shrewd, briny pungency in the shrilling gusts 
as they sweep round the corners. The boatmen have a fresh- water 
look. Their sou’westers and jerseys cannot deceive the practiced 
eye. They can handle an oar capitally; but they have not the 
toughened and bronzed Channel-tossed look of the fellows whom 
you encounter lolling in blanket trousers over the Ramsgate piers, 
or arguing in groups at the entrance of the Margate jetties, or 
heightening the picturesque appearance of the Deal and Folkestone 
shingle. Yet I cannot conceive of any place better calculated to 
delight a man of maritime studies and scenes than Gravesend. You 
may linger all day on the queer-looking roofed-in pier, with the old 
barge moored against it, and never feel weary. Hour after hour 
unfolds the canvas of a never-ending panorama of shipping. Pict- 
ure after picture goes by — the great ocean steamship, the little ratch- 
ing ketch, the sturdy old collier, the white and shining yacht, the 
large and loftily rigged ship, the eager tug hissing through the trem- 
bling current, and all the life and light and color and wondrous 
transformations of the river take a certain character of remoteness 
akin to unreality, as though what you gazed at was nothing but a 
series of noble paintings, indeed, from the quietude that prevails 
about you; an atmosphere of lazy stillness broken by the muffled, 
rushing sound of the current sweeping under the pier, the dulled 
voices of men conversing outside the wooden structure, and the 
straining noise of boats as the tide sets the little craft chafing one 
another’s sides. 


A CHAT ^Y1TH A FISHERMAN, 

A FEW days after the dreadful gale that had wrecked whole fleets 
of smacks belonging to the eastern and north eastern ports, and 
drowned many hundreds of fishermen, I was visited by a Hull 
smacksman, who came to tell me tliat ne had lost a son in one of the 
vessels which had gone down on the Dogger Bank during the storm, 
and to inform me of the misery and destitution into which the wid- 
ows and children of the poor drowned men were plunged. He 
told me in a rough, plain, earnest way how his son was to have 
been married tq a young girl on his return, and how the poor lad 
had saved up a few nounds to purchase a little furniture tor the 
home which she was preparing, when the news reached her that the 
smack in wdiich her sweetheart was had gone down with all hands; 
how, in house after house, down whole streets, there was a con- 
stant sound of wailing and moaning, with misery and hunger in- 
doors. among the weeping women and the sobbing children; and, 
said my fisherman to me, though God knew he wes a poor man, yet 
such Was the suffering he liad witnessed, so unspeakable great was 
the calamity that had" overtaken the fishing population of Hull and 
of other ports—but he spoke of Hull because he belonged to it— that 
had the thirty shillings he subscribed to the fund tor relief of 
these widow^s and orphans been the last bit of money he had in the 
world, he must have given it and taken his chance for himself. 


134 


EOUi^D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


The subject was a deeply^ interesting one to me, who had lived 
among fishermen, W'ritten about them, knew their heroism well, 
their hardships, the simple-heartedness of them. We got talking 
about the smacksman’s life, his risks, of various features connected 
v;ith his calling; and, as the subject is one that has been commended 
to the British public in an appeal for charity for those whom the 
frightful storm bereaved, 1 offer no excuse tor repeating in print 
some of the observations made by this smacksman of his own voca- 
tion. His reference to what is known as the “ boxing sptem” en- 
abled me to lead off with my questions. The term boxing, 1 may 
say, is applied to the conveyance of fish in boats from the smacks 
to the steamers which bring the fish home. As the vessels fill up 
wdtli fish they transfer them to steamers, which, by relieving them 
of their freight, enable them to remain for weeks on the fishing- 
ground. 

“ Is it a fact,” 1 inquired, “ that smacksmen object to the boxing 
system?” 

” It is, sir,” was the reply. 

” Why?” 

“Because it’s dangerous to life, sir. It keeps men working for 
a considerable time in open boats in all kinds of weather. It an- 
swers the owner’s purpose; he shares in the profits of carrying the 
fish, and it enables him to keep his vessel at sea as long as it is pos- 
sible for her to remain there; and by this means the men are deprived 
of all home comforts and of the management of their families.” 

“ What is the size of the boats employed in carrying fish from the 
smacks to the steam-cutters?” 

“Well, their length’ll be about twenty feet, breadth six feet, and 
depth three feet.” 

“ And these boats the men have to launch in heavy weather?” 

“ Yes, often in weather that may be called heavy. The risk is in- 
creased by the peculiar circumstances under which the men are 
placed while working at the boating system; for you’ll hear again 
and again of their shoving the whole of a night’s catch into the 
boat at once, in order to secure a quicK dispatch and obtain the 
earliest possible market.” 

“ How is the Dogger Bank relished as a fishing-ground?” 

“Well,” he replied, “ it passes by the name of ‘The Cemetery* 
among us. In the winter-time, I don’t suppose there’s a more dan- 
gerous place in the world. Wiith strong winds from the N.E. veer- 
ing to the N.W., there come the heavy seas from the Atlantic— if 
you can call the ocean to the norrards of the North Sea by that 
name— which strike the rising ground of the bank and turn the 
water into a boiling caldron. It was there where the smacks went 
down. The seas just coiled over and fairly broke upon ’em, smoth- 
ering ’em, smashing in their decks, stamping ’em out as you might 
grind a beetle out of sight with your heel.” 

“ Are your smacks supplied with barometers? 1 mean by that, 
have they any means of knowing when to expect foul weather?” 

“No, sir; they’re not generally supplied. One firm owning 
about twenty sail of vessels, who always wmrk on the single-boat 
system in winter, provide their vessels with barometers. 1 should 
think they must be very useful instruments,” said he, speaking as 


KOUXD THE GALLEY FI HE. 


135 


r 

though he had never been shipmates with one; ‘‘and 1 may here 
add that none ot those twenty vessels alluded to were lost. The ma- 
jority of us smacksmen have nothing to tell the weather by except 
practical experience.” 

“But couldn’t the admiral signal— couldn’t he alleast be fur- 
nished with a barometer?” 

“No doubt,” he replied, “But smacks get scattered, and it 
would be best for each master to understand the weather for him- 
self. Ihe admiral is more for rallying of us. He has his job cut 
out for him after a storm. His general scheme is to fall in with a 
steam carrier, and then sail to the ground from which lie’s been 
driven by the gale, expecting the rest of the fleet to do likewise; but 
it often happens that many days pass before they’re able to get to- 
gether, and this brings heavy losses among the fishermen, wiio, hav- 
ing no ice, are forced to find the admiral before they can start fish- 
ing afresh.” 

“ What difference is there in the mode of fishing among the Hull, 
Grimsby, Ramsgate, Penzance, and other smacks?” 

“ Vessels belonging to Hull, Grimsby, Piamsgate, and Lowestoft 
use the trawl-nets; but the Penzance boats are what is called ‘ drift- 
ers,’ or herring-boats.” 

“ 1 asked that question,” said 1, “ in order to inquire what kind 
of fishing — that is, which sort of voyage— is most in favor among 
smacksmen.” 

“ Why, in winter-time we like best the single-boat system— when 
a smack goes out and gets what fish she can. and returns. This 
system does not require us to use small boats. It pays just as well 
as the other system, and is less dangerous in other directions than 
that of doing away with ‘ boxing,’ as it leads to vessels scattering, 
and helps in that manner to lessen the risks ot collision. We don’t 
object to the boxing system in summer, but it oughtn’t to be prac- 
ticed in winter. That’s what we think.” 

“ Smack-oMmers manage to secure themselves, don’t they?” 

“ Well, yes, by what’s termed natural insurance, which provides 
for total loss— and for damage to a certain amount, apart from fish- 
ing-gear. Masters don’t much like these here insurance companies. 
They’re too despotic. I’ll tell you what they do, sir: they won’t 
allow a master the right ot defending himself against any charge 
that’s brought against him before thenn Why, they think nothing 
of suspending a man frorri acting as master for a couple of years", 
perhaps for nothing worse than an error of judgment which the 
Board ot Trade Commissioner would havfe been satisfied to repri- 
mand him for.” 

“ Do smacksmen make a provision for their families by any 
method of insurance or clubbing?” 

“ Yes, sir,” he answered; “ as a rule they do. There is a Fisher- 
man’s Widow and Grphan Society, which, for payment of one shil- 
ling a month, pays a widow £20 or £25, according to the time her hus- 
band has been a member, and there is also a Friendly Protection 
Society, numbering at Hull seven hundred members, which gives 
sick-pay for certain periods and £12 at death. Both these insti- 
tulions’do a great deal of good. Many fishermen also join the local 
friendly societies.” 


136 


BOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


“ But a lars^e number, 1 suppose, do not subscribe, and it is the 
widows and children of those who have been plunged into immedi- 
ate destitution by their husbands’ death?” 

“Yes, sir; but it is not always possible to subscribe; there are 
too many of us, ana some go without work tor weeks,” 

” What is the average tonnage of the Hull and Grimsby smacks?” 

” About seventy tons.” 

” What is your opinion ot them as seaworthy vessels?” 

” Well, sir, the build and behavior of them are first-rate; but a 
great many are ill found, are in a bad state as concerns leakage; 
and I can assure you that among us fishermen there is a strong feel- 
ing that there ought to be Government inspection ot fishing-vessels 
by practical men.” 

“Will you explain to me the meaning ot shares, and how they are 
proportioned?” 

” It’s in this way,” said he; ” the net proceeds are divided into 
eight shares; the master lakes 1| share, the mate share, and the 
owner 5^ shares, out ot which he has to pay three boys or casual 
hands, who receive together on an average about £2 2s. a week, and 
he has also to find his vessel’s outfit.” 

‘‘ Is it true that smacksmen object to life-belts?” 

” No; they don’t object generally. Some do, on the ground of 
their being too cumbersome to work in. Thej" ought to be worn in 
‘boxing.’ There’s a particular danger in that system which I for- 
got to mention; it’s that ot collisions, which are constantly happen- 
ing, owing to the men being.auxious to get their fish on board the 
steam-cutter, to do which they all sail to her as close as they can, 
with their boats in tow, and two hands in each boat.” 

” And what other special dangers are there,” said I, ” connected 
with your calling?” 

” Well,” he replied, ” answ^ering that question, as concerning the 
single-boat system which I’ve explained, 1 can but say that what 
the smacksman has to contend with are just the ordinary perils of 
a seaman’s life, such as shipping heavy seas which wash us over- 
board, and being dragged into the sea while drawing water, haul- 
ing in the net, and the likes ot that. But the boxing system adds 
to these dangers by the risk ot collision, the capsizing of boats, and 
the uselessness of the casual hands, the best of them preferring to 
ship in vessels on the single-boat system.” 

‘‘ Your casual hands, as you call them, touch the apprentice ques- 
tion. What is your opinion ot smack-boys’ homes?” 

” W hy, that they’re a great advantage to all fishing-ports and to 
the lads themselves, it the homes are properly managed.” 

” Can you say that smack-boys are ill-treated at sea?” 

” No, 1 can’t, sir. There are a tew exceptions, but my experi- 
ence is that the boys are treated with uniform kindness.” 

“To return to the question ot loss of life,” said I, “among 
smackmen, what proposals have you to offer to diminish il ?” 

“ Well, sir, if 1 had my way, I’d totally abolish the boxing sys- 
tem from the end of September till the end of March. That alone 
would greatly reduce the death-rate among fishermen; and I’d also 
have Government inspectors to survey the vessels, and see that they 
were found, and equipped, and ballasted, and so on.” 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIllE. 


167 

“ And now,” 1 asked referring to the vessels which trade among 
the smacks in spirits and tobacco, “ what can you tell me about the 
system called ‘ coopering ’?” r 

“ Why,” he answered, warming up, “ my opinion of ‘ coopering ' 
is that steps ought to be taken lo put a stop entirely to such degrad- 
ing traffic. If it could be put an end to, it would be a blessing to 
all concerned — particularly to the men. It ’ud make your hair 
stand on end to hear of some of the awful things 1 and scores be- 
sides have witnessed — many of our men having, in their drunken 
fury, jumped overboard, and in many instances been drowned; and 
in hundreds of cases ‘ coopering ’ has been the means of causing the 
men at sea to fall out and fight almost lo death’s door. I’ll explain 
how it’s carried on. The trafficking craft is in most cases an old 
vessel that has been condemned in England and sold to some for- 
eigner for the purpose of carrying on this trade— some one hailing 
from Hamburg, Bremerhaveri, Antwerp, or some port along the 
Dutch, German, or Belgian coast. This man — or call it these peo- 
ple— get their tobacco, cigars, liquors and the vai^ous other articles 
they deal in, in large quantities from agents in the different ports 
they visit at a very iow'^ price. The articles sold are of a very in- 
ferior qualit}’’ — especially the drink, which is chiefly rum and gin 
of a very common and nery nature. The prices charged as a rule 
are — for shag tobacco, Qd. per lb.; cavendish, 2s. per lb.; 
cigars, from 6s. to 12s. per box. Gin and rum are sold at Is. 6(?.. 
per bottle, brandy 2s. The smacksmen generally arrange to take a 
little money to sea with them for the purpose of buying tobacco, ta 
save paying 4s. per pound for it at home. In my opinion, this 
traffic would receive a blow if fishermen were allowed to get their 
tobacco out of the bonded stores.” 

This, it will be seen, coincides with the report of the Sea Fishing: 
Trade Committee, who called attention in strong terms to the evils 
of ” coopering,” Kot only, was it stated, do these boats lead to the 
bartering of ship’s stores and gear for drink, ” but they bring about 
the demoralization of the hands and even of the skippers serving on 
board smacks, and directly lead to risk and loss of life. We have it 
in evidence that the\^ are floating grog-shops of the worst descrip- 
tion, and that the)’’ are under no control whatever.” 

There was little more that 1 could think of to ask my intelligent 
friend. In reply to my inquiry as to the value of smacks at various 
ports, he said the question was difficult to answer, “ as there’s a 
vast deal of difference among the smacks belonging to the ports,, 
and likewise in the damage done ’em, for it’s damage that counts 
heavily in the support of them. The cost of a new smack at Hull 
and Grimsby, with all the modern apppliances, will be about £1500; 
the average worth of smacks at those ports is about £900, and the 
cost of their fishing gear about £70,”- 
. ” And a Hull smack’s earnings?” 

** Between £800 and £900 a year— I mean the gross earnings.” 

‘‘ Smacks are being constantly run down by vessels. Do they 
want better lights? What is the reason of these frequent disas- 
ters?” 

“Asa rule,” he answ’ered, ” smacks carry very good lights; but 
there is room for improvement. I’m one of many who strongly ad- 


138 


KOUND THE GALLEY FIIiE. 


vise tliat smacks should carry more powerful lights than they now 
use. If smacks are very often run down —and true enough that is 
— it’s mainly because of the bad lookout that’s kept aboard vessels 
navigating the North Sea. There are captains who don’t respect our 
lives. They see us lying-to our nets, they know we can’t get out of 
the road; but on they come, never shifting their helm; and if they 
pass by without striking us, and we call to ’em to know where 
they’re coming, all the answer we get consists of brutal curses.” 

Apparently, then — and 1 say it not alone on the evidence of this 
man, but on the assurance of many others engaged in the fishing- 
trade— the measure that is required to diminish the loss of life at 
sea among the valuable class of men employed in the North Sea 
fishery is the suppression ot the boxing system during the winter 
months. And another most important step would be the supervision 
of smacks by qualified inspectors appointed by the Board of Trade. 
At present 1 do not know of any law to prevent an owner from 
sending, or to punish an owner for dispatching, to sea the craziest 
old smack that can be kept alive by long and frequent spells at the 
pump, it is certainly most anomalous that close attention should 
be given to the loading, construction, and equipment of ships be- 
longing to one section of the English marine, while another section 
that finds occupation for many thousands of men and boys is utterly 
disregarded by the Stale in all things saving the exhibition ot lights. 


A FOVBPEJSTNY VOYAGE. 

Dr. Johnson once said that the full tide of human life was to 
be seen at Charing Cross. The full tide of human commerce begins ^ 
a few bridges lower down. A man should count it a real privilege " 
that, for the modest sum of tourpence, he is able to survey such an 
illustration of the wealth and power of this Empire as may enable - 
him to form a very clear and true conception of the aggregate com- 
merce and industry of the United.Xingdom. To embark at London 
Bridge on board a fourpenny steamboat, bound (o Woolwich, is, in . 
my humble judgment, to be conveyed through the most wonderful 
series of transformation scenes that the world has to offer. What 
is comparable to that passage? No one who has entered the Sidney - 
Heads but will remember the astonishment and delight inspired by 
the miles of blue water, studded with fairy islands, the jasper-like 
reflection of clouds in the glass-clear depths, the rich tropical vege- 
tation of the shores, the gleaming spars of shipping lifting their 
delicate tracery into the darkly-pure blue. Passages of strange and 
shining beauty recur like haunting memories of fragments of East- 
ern story to those who have threaded the waters of the Nile or the 
Hoogly: and recollections of the Peiho are made delightfully pict- 
uresque and impressive by visions of uncouth junks moored in the 
rushing stream, by glimpses of distant temples^ by remembrance of 
soft winds aromatic with spices. 

But the Thames! Its scenery is the work of human hands. An 
atmosphere of yellow light gives magnitude and a vagueness of 
outline to the leagues of water-side structures, and an obscurity to 


EOIJXD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


139 

the horizon in which the monuments of industry fade with a simula- 
tion of immensity that cheats the senses into a belief of immeasur- 
able remoteness. The great ships are in the docks tar down the 
river; but though the steamers which lie. in tiers upon tiers in the 
- Pool, and far beyond the limits of that reach, are for the most part 
but of middle size, yet the mind loses all sense of their individual 
dimensions in the overwhelming impression produced by their col- 
■ lective tonnage. One journey through this magnificent stretch of 
stream is a large education. The flags of a score of nationalities 
color the somber heavens with their green and blue and yellow^ and 
white folds. All the countries in the world appear to pass in a kind 
of review as the ear catches the hundred tongues, and the eye the 
hundred ./aces, and the nostrils the hundred scents wafted from the 
holds of ships "whose grayish spars seem yet to retain the heat of the 
equatorial sun, and whose sides are fretted with the wash of the 
surges of the great oceans. 

1 once took tourpenny worth of travel aboard a Woolwich steamer, 
for the sake of renewing some old recollections. 1 will not say that 
a better kind of steamer would not have made the voyage more 
comfortable. The dexterous and wmtchful skipper, who stood upon 
the bridge, carrying his freight of human lives through the intrica- 
cies of blundering barges and the bewilderment of swinging ships 
and capricious tugs, by light motions of his arm and soft asides to 
the boy, who furnished them with ear-piercing echoes, seemed to 
me to deserve a stouter ship. The funnel casing had much the ap- 
pearance of an aged sauce-pan whose bottom had been burned to 
the thinness of a sailor’s shirt. 1 thought to myself, “ Suppose we 
should tip some of these old barges our stem by mistake? As- 
suredly we should crumple up forward like a sponge-cake; and 
how should we manage to save our lives?” 

1 looked everywhere, but there was not so much as an old cork to 
pitch overboard in case of accident. Even the seats, rotten as the 
hinges were, were not likely to come away in a hurry. But there 
was too much to be seen to permit me to bother over the crazy, 
quivering, admirably handled and most dangerous old machine that 
was running us from pier to pier against a strong flood-tide. Once 
clear of London Bridge we were in a complete lane formed by 
moored or anchored steamers. They were very much alike — little 
beauty among them; some of them well decked, with their gang- 
ways out, showing the covering- board close to the water, and mak- 
ing the structures, with their tall after-decks and top-gallant fore'- 
caslles, look as if they were in course of being built, instead of 
newly arrived from voyages long and short. But all such charac- 
teristics were lost in the thoughts of the immense mass of tonnage 
here submitted. Where did it end? where would the last of these 
steamers be lying? To right and left they stretched, with lighters 
along-side, steam-winches rattling, the vapor of donkey-engines 
blowing out in volumes, some in semi-discharged ;?tate, with a heavy 
list to port or starboard with^ frequent alternations of the flags of 
Denmark, Sweden, France, the Netherlands— 1 know not what 
other bunting— amid which our own red ensign counted as twenty 
to one. 

The whole commerce of the world seemed to be here; but in truth 


140 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


the Thames’ show of it was only just begun. On either hand, 
trembling in the distance, in tlie vacent places between the build- 
ings, could be caught the hair-like outlines of the masts and rig- 
gings of ships, with their house-flags twinkling in tiny spots of 
color; and still, as the fleets of steamers held us in their intermina- 
ble lane, did there heave up out of the remote sky more lines and 
threads, and tapering, tremulous heights of shipping. But the wealth 
ot industry and the prodigious achievements of British commerce 
were not more noticeable in the vast assemblage of steam and sail- 
ing vessels tlian in such minute particulars as the little panting 
screw-tug with a chain of deeply laden coal-barges in her wake, 
every ebony mound embellished with a recumbent figure in shirt- 
sleeves, a sooty pipe in his mouth, and his face to the sky. The 
familiar Thames wherry was also here to add its touch of interest 
to the wonderful scene— the old waterman resting on his oars, and 
squinting over his shoulder at tho passing tug, in vdiose tumble, as 
she goes by, the little boat begins to flounder, while the tall hat of 
the rower shortens and enlarges with the reeling of the wherry like 
an optical illusion. 

As the lines of steamers dwindle the river widens; and when w'e 
come to the bend of a long reach, it opens intc%a metal-colored sur- 
face ot gleaming water, trembling with the speeding of its own 
rushing, though it retains polish enough to serve as a mirror, and 
to hold under each vessel the dark, inverted shadow of a phantom 
ship. Here we come across a long, low, iron four-masted craft, 
with painted ports. Even a sailor who has never been shipmate 
with more than three masts at a time mieht gaze with something of 
astonishment at the comolex tracery that crowds the air over that 
immensely long and narrow hull, and wonder how long it would take 
a man to find out where all those ropes lead. It is not enough that 
there are four masts; there must be double top-gallant yards too, 
making eight sets of braces where in former limes three were found 
enough. But these are progressive days in ship-building. By-and- 
b}’- we shall have five-masted, full-rigged sailing-ships, no doubt, 
with new Board of Trade rules for the examination of candidates 
in square-rigging. Let us hope that there will be also rules for the 
proper manniiiirof such craft; for it struck me, as I looked at that 
big, four-masted ship, that it her complement is assessed on the basis 
of her tonnage, without reference to the number of cloths she 
spreads, it must go desperately hard with the cook and the butcher’s 
mate in a gale of wind. 

Father Thames, once a god, might more filly be termed a god- 
dess, under the title of Commerce; tor this assuredly is the presid- 
ing spirit. It quickens with life the smallest and craziest structure 
by the water-side; the very ebb and flow ot the noble stream seem 
obedient to its laws, and its shadow is in the air and upon the face 
of the waters. I cannot imagine any one ot those skippers of the 
Woolwich and Greenwich steamboats, who pass up and dowm the 
river some scores of times in the course of a week, so intimately 
acquainted with the wharves and warehouses and the uncountable 
features of industry which crowd the bank for miles and miles, as 
not to behold something new, something he has never taken close 
notice of before, every time he directs his gaze with attention to 


^ the galley fire. 


141 


the shore on either hand. The billy-boys and barges squattering 
like mud-hanks hard against the slimy piles; the giant cranes pois- 
ing tons’ neight of burden in the air; the vast warehouses, with 
the long and powerful steamships snugged securely alongside them; 
the endless procession of wharfage teeming with hurrying figures 
tull of business — these and countless other features of the scene fur- 
nish the apparently limitless lines of steamers and other craft with 
such a biickeround as completes the deep and stirring significance 
of their multifarious aspect. It is a vast picture of motion— of 
great vessels coming, of great vessels going, of lighters swirling up 
swiftly with the tide broadside on, of tugs speeding in quest of 
towage-jobs, of passenger steamers driving through the steel-col- 
ored current with a glancing of silver at their keen stems and a 
whirl of snow sluicing in a broad torrent from under their counters. 
Now^ it is a big ocean steamship, of some three or four thousand 
tons, leisurely making for Gravesend, as trim as a man-of-war to 
the eye, her sides and funnels spotless, her scuttles twinkling like 
diamonds in her black length as they catch the sparkle of the pass- 
ing water; while in vivid contrast there comes towing past her a 
full-1 igged ship fresh from some Antipodean port, her brave hull 
covered with the scars of the conflicts she has waged w ith distant 
seas, her canvas carelessly rolled up on the .yards, her rigging slack, 
and a crowd of men forward and aft engaged in pointing out one to 
another the familiar scenes ashore. 

Ay, pathos is not w'anting even amiil so prosaic a scene of com- 
merce as the reaches of our noble river exhibit. You find it to a 
degree proportioned to your powers of perception and realization in 
some such an object, for instance, as that ship yonder, newly warped 
out from one of the docks, and all ready to begin her voyage. The 
hearty shouts which rise from her decks, the active little figures 
aloft, the bustle and business in her, cannot impair the pregnant 
suggestiveuess of her leave-taking. You think of the people aboard 
who have said “ Good-by ” to their friends, perhaps forever. Poor 
Jack, sitting astride on the foretop-gallant yard-arm, catches hold 
of the lift, while he turns his head in the direction of where he 
reckons Stepney or Poplar lies, and, as he thinks of his wife or 
sw’eetheart and the perplexities of the new allotment notes, he dis- 
charges a stream of tobacco-juice into the air, and, with a melan- 
choly countenance, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and 
goes on with his job. There may be plenty of bustle and loud 
calls, but there is bound to be a share of sorrow too. It is not long 
since the skipper took his wife to his heart, and his head is full of 
her and the youngsters as he paces the quarter-deck, sometimes 
pausing to peep over the side at the cluster of boats round the gang- 
w’ay ladder, and sometimes singing out to the mate, who has his 
hands full forward. Indeed, it is impossible to look at an outward- 
bound ship without sympathy and a kind of respect that comes 
near to being reverence in some minds. What will be her fortune, 
yon think? tShe holds herself bravely on the bosom of the calm 
river; the current wrinkles itself sharply against her solid bows, and 
breaks away along her side in a cadence like the tinkling of bells. 
Who can doubt that tears are being shed in her darksome interior? 
It is hard to leave the old home. The glimpse of the church spire 


14‘3 


HOUND THE GALLEY FIHE. 


tliroueb the open scuttle brings up memories which tighten the 
throat. When shall the next meeting be? and when time brings it 
about, will not absent faces and a change in the spirit of old asso- 
ciations make it sadder than this going is? Pra}^ God that no harm 
befall the stout ship! As you sweep past her 3 'our hearty hope is 
that prosperous winds may attend her, and that in the new country 
fortune and happiness await those whose sad eyes dwell fixedly on 
the land that will be far astern of them before the sun has thrice 
sunk beyond the deep. 

It may be that thoughts of this kind are suggested more by sail- 
ing than by steam ships, because the existence of the propeller does 
to a large extent mitigate the bitterness of the contemplation of 
distance. But let no in shore dweller flatter himself that the sailing 
vessel is very nearly extinct. She may have one leg in the grave, 
but the other seems to me still to possess an astonishing amount of 
animation. The hulls of the vessels in the docks on the Blackwall 
side of the river are not, for the most part, visible from the water; 
unhappily for steamers, there is not the least difSculty in telling, by 
the look of spars bristling out of a hidden dock, which are steam- 
ships there and which are sailing vessels. Some of these days, ‘per- 
haps, when the right kind of moral shall have been drawn from 
broken propeller shafts and twisted rudder-heads, the difficulty of 
distinguishing between the rig of a sailing-ship and the rig of a 
steamer may prove very much more considerable than it now is; 
but. as this matter is at present ordered, the towering masts, the 
immensely square j^ards, should leave even a ploughman in na 
doubt as to the character of the vessels to which they belong. 

The num.berof sailing-ships which crowd the docks on either side 
the river must prove a real surprise to people who believe that it is 
all steam nowadays. Let ancient mariners be consoled by this as- 
surance: there is plenty of steam indeed but there is a deal of 
canvas too; so that all Jack’s work does not lie in the bunkers yet, 
and there must still be a large demand for seamanship of the old 
sort. 

1 am not sure that the wonder of the river does not owe quite as 
much to the sailing-ships as the steamers. The tall spars, the mag- 
nificent spread of yards, the black lines of shrouds, the beautiful 
tracery of intersecting running gear, added to the shapely hulls 
which support these towering fabrics of hemp and steel and wood, 
make a most noble and impressive sight, and give, so to speak, a 
final touch to the teeming, opulent, commercial inspirations of the 
great river. Lower and lower yet down the grand old stream the 
spirit of enterprise is settling, and the day is not far dislant when 
Uie projected dock-yards at Tilbury will veritablj'^ transform the 
quaint old town of Gravesend into the sea-gate of London. It is 
almost startling to contemplate that time. One thinks of Gravesend 
now as a mere break in the departure from the Thames. Will the 
chain of docks end at Tilbury? At Gravesend, apparently, they 
are thinking otherwise, and reckoning— somewhat against their own 
hopes— that if the Tilbury Docks people play at leap frog with the 
Albert Dock proprietors, the latter company will repay the compli- 
ment and land themselves some distance lower down yet. The 
limits of the port of London, however, will, 1 believe, be reached 


KOUiq'!) TKK GALLEY FIRE. 


143 

by \v\^hin a quarter of a mile by the promoters of the Tilbury Dock 
undert'iking,* so that one cannot say in this case that there is room 
e-nougliNfor all. Unquestionably the docks which are nearest the 
sea will bp the docks best liked; and owners will profit at the ex- 
pense of tug masters and pilots. 

Meanwhile Gravesend may be complimented on its prospects. ^ 
But what do the watermen think? They are loud just now in their 
complaints of the steam ferries. They say that they are not allowed 
to board the ocean steamers, even to put Gravesend passengers 
ashore. Everybody must go to Tilbury first. How muoh of their 
vocation will be left when tbe new docks are opened? But assuredly 
if some old interests vanish, many new interests will start into life 
under the magic w^and of the harlequin Progress. 

One may look for a complete transformation of the low, flat, 
treeless shore of Tilbury ness, and an ever-increasing clustering of 
industries along the banks of those reaches whose skirts now mainly 
consist of mud. Our fourpenny voyage w^ill have to be extended it 
we are to compass all the wonders of our river below bridges. The 
New Zealander who is to muse over the ruins of St. Paul’s may 
come as- soon as he likes, only it is quite certain that his meditations 
will not be excited by any speetacle of decay. Life and industry 
were never more active on the Thames than now — enterprise never 
more bold, speculation never more prophetic. The time is not re- 
mote when Gravesend, which 1 may say for centuries has been 
thought of as a port of call, will be connected with London by lines 
of edifices and piers and wharfs, as Blackwall is connected, and fut- 
ure passengers by the little Thames steamboats— which it is to be 
earnestly hoped, in the good time coming, will be considerably more 
Tiver- worthy than they now appear to be — will be conveyed past a 
continuous panorama of commercial life and marine interests to 
limits which will make Gravesend and the opposite shore the actual 
sea-gate of the port of London; in other words, the entrance to a 
scene of civilization comparable to nothing that we can imagine 
even by the building up of fancy from the wondrous facts at present 
submitted to any man bold enough to adventure upon a fourpenny 
voyage down the Thames. 


POOB JACK. 

I CLIMBED the steep hill that runs from the Belvedere railway- 
station, pausing now and again for breath and to glance at the sum- 
mer beauty of the distant green land through which the river toiled, 
like a stream of quicksilver sluggishly rofliug, and presently, pass- 
ing througli a gateway, found myself in a fine park-like stretch of 
grounds, shaded by a multitude of tall far-branching trees, in the 
midst of which, and upon the highest point of the billowy soil, stood 
a spacious and exceedingly handsome mansion. There were circu- 
lar seats affixed to many of the trees, and upon them I noticed sev- 
eral bent and aged figures leaning their breasts upon stout walking- 
sticks, and holding themselves in very quiet postures. Here and 


♦ Since this was written other limits have been deprived. 


144 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


there, walking; to and fro near the bouse or upon the gras^ under 
the trees, were similar figures, all of them bowed by old age, 
though some of them paced the turf with a certain nim’)lene88 of 
tread. They were dressed in pilot-cloth trousers and sleeved waist- 
coats, with brass buttons; and ancient as these men were, yet it \va& 
wonderful to observe, even where decrepitude was at its height, 
how the old sea-swing and lurchiiiir gait of the sailor lived in their 
hobbling and determined their calling, as though tlie word “ sea- 
man ” had been branded upon every man’s forehead. I stood look- 
ing at them, and at the house and at the great trees, beyond which 
the distant prospect was shining under the high sun, for many min- 
utes before advancing. The sense of repose conveyed to me by the 
shadows of the trees, the restful shapes of cattle upon the slopes be- 
yond the mansion, the motionless postures of the old men seated, 
and the movements of the few figures who were walking, cannot be 
expressed in words. 1 listened. There was no note of human life 
in the air; no sound broke the fragrant summer stillness but the 
piping of birds in the trees, the humming of bees and flies, the 
silken rustling of leaves. The landscape was like a painted picture, 
save where here and there, upon the far-ott shining silver of the 
river, a vessel slowly gliding broke the still scene with a fugitive 
interest, 

I vralked to the house and entered the spacious hall, and, as 1 
did so, a single stroke on a bell to denote that it was half an hour 
after noon resounded through the building. A number of ancient 
men hung about this entrance, an(i I examined them curiously; for 
of all the transformations which old age works in the human coun- 
tenance 1 never beheld stranger examples than were submitted by 
many of these venerable seamen. Let me own to a feeling of posi- 
tive awe in my inspection, for there was no face but that t'me had 
invested it with a kind of sanctity. “ How old are you, my man?”^ 
I said to one of them. He turned his lusterless eyes upon me and 
bent his ear to my mouth. I repeated the question, and he answered 
that he was ninety-three. Years had so honey-combed his face that 
such likeness of humanity as there was in it appealed to the eye 
rather as a fantasy than as a real thing. A sailor is usually an old 
man at fifty, thanks to exposure, to hardship, and to the food he 
has to live on. Many of these men had used the sea for above 
half a century; some of them were drawing near to ahundred years 
of age; little wonder, therefore, that they should be mere dim and 
feeble vestiges of creation, and that vitality in conformations so 
decayed should excite the awe and reverence of those who explore 
the vague and crumbling features, and behold the immortal spirit 
struggling amid lineaments wdiich have the formlessness of the face 
of a statue dug from the sand which entombs an ancient city, 1 
turned my eyes from these oUl men to the hall in w^hich I stood. 
Pretty columns of malachite supported the roof; wood-work and 
ceiling were lavishly decorated; maripe hints helpful to the preju- 
dices of the decayed mariners were not wanting in the shape of 
models of full-rigged ships— men-of -war, and East Indiamen of the 
olden time; through the door 1 could see the green grass sloping 
away into a spacious lawn; and the w^arm air, full of sunshine, 
gushed in sweet with the smell of clover and wild flow^ers. 


KOUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


145 

la a lew minutes 1 was joined by the house-governor, himself a 
skipper, and fresh from the command of a sailing-ship — a genial, 
hearty gentleman, and the fittest person in the world for the com- 
mand of such a quarter-deck as this. 

“ The old men will be going to dinner at one o’clock,” he said; 
would I like to see them at their meal? I answered ” Yes;” so we 
stood in the door of a long, handsome room, fitted with tables and 
benches, and watched the aged seamen come in one by one, hob- 
bling on their sticks, many of them talking to themselves. 

” Have you any ship- masters among these men?” 1 inquired. 
“ Several,” answered the house- governor; and he instantly called 
out a name. An old man approached us slowly; he was bald, with 
a very finely- shaped head and a long, gray beard, and stood defer- 
entially before us, his hands clasped, waiting to be addressed. 

” This man had command of vessels for many years,” said the 
house-governor. 

1 looked at the poor old creature, and received one of the gentlest, 
saddest smiles I ever saw on a man’s face. 1 asked him how it 
was that he came to need the charity of this institution in his old 
age. 

” 1 was in the General Steam Navigation Company’s service, sir, 
for many years, and had charge of vessels running to Boulogne. 
But my memory began to fail me; I was attacked with dizziness, 
and had to give up. £ had saved some money, and took a little 
hotel at Boulogne, on the Quay. 1 could not make it answer, and, 
being ruined and an old man, sir, I had to come here.” 

He broke down at this, his eyes filled with tears, and he turned 
his back upon me. 1 waited a little, and then, taking his arm, 1 
asked him if he was happ}’’ in this house. Yes, he said, he was 
quite happ)y. 

‘‘You may talk to me without fear,” 1 continued; ” 1 am here to 
learn the truth and to speak it. Do they feed you well?” 

” Very well, sir.” 

‘‘ Have you no complaints to make?” 

‘‘None, sir.” 

‘‘ You think this institution a good and honest charity?” 

” God knows what we should do without it,” heexclaimed, look- 
ing round at the old men -who were taking their seats at the dinner- 
tables. Here* the house-governor brought up some other aged men, 
whom he introduced as ship-masters. One of them w'as a North 
Shields captain, eighty years of age; he supported himself on two 
sticks, was a little, white-faced, ancient creature, with, strange silver 
hair, and he spoke with a wistful expression- of* countenance. Ho 
had. been seized with paralysis by ‘‘ farling doon ” the main-hatch 
of his vessel. He told me, in his rich, plaintive. North-country 
brogue, how Ihe-doctor had measured his leg and thigh with a tape for 
some purpose 1 could not clearly understand — and how the accident 
had flung him upon the world a beggar, and forced him to take a 
re’fuge in this institution. Was he> happy? Ay, it was a man’s 
own fault if he wasn’t happy here. He was grateful to God for the 
care taken of him. At eighty a man was ” na’ langer a laddie;” 
and with a bright old laugh he hobbled hungrilyUoward one of the 
dinner-table.s. 


146 


ROUND THE GALLEY EIRE. 


In a few moments two«belfs were struck, signifying one o’clock, 
and all hands being sealed, 1 followed the house-governor to the 
bottom of the room to havefa look at the tables before the old men 
fell to. The dinner consisted of salt fish, butter, potatoes, and plain 
suet-pudding. 

“ This is Tuesday’s fare,” said the house-governor: ” on Sundays 
they get boiled beef, potatoes, and plum-pudding; on Mondays, veg- 
etable soup, boiled mutton, and vegetables at discretion; on Tues- 
days, what you see; on Wednesdays, soup, boiled beef, and pota- 
toes; on Thursdays, roast mutton, vegetables, and bread-aud-cheese; 
on Fridays, salt pork, pea-soup, and calavances, and on Saturdays, 
soup and houilU — not soap and bullion, as Jack says, one onion to 
a gallon of water — but a very good preserved soup, with potatoes, 
or rice and bread-and-cheese. Taste this fish.” 

I did so and found it excellent, so, likewise, was the suet- pud- 
ding. 

The potatoes were new. The beer was the only doubtful feature 
of the repast; it was thin, insipid, and flat. I made haste to taste and 
approve, for 1 could see that the old fellows were very hungry. 
The governor left me, and went to the top of the room, where, in a 
loud and impressive voice, he said grace, bidding the ancient mar- 
iners be thankful for what they were about to receive; they all half 
rose, and in one feeble, rustling old pipe sung out “ Amen,” 5nd 
then, like school-boys, made snatches at the dishes, and in a minute 
w'ere eating with avidity. It warmed my heart to see them. It made 
me feel that there must yet be plenty of goodness left in this world, 
wh?b, through the benevolence of strangers and their large-hearted 
concern for poor Jack, ninety-three old, very old seamen, tottering 
on the verge of the grave, so poor and so destitute, so feeble and so 
friendless that, but for the benevolence of those whom Providence 
had brought to their succor, they must have miserably starved and 
died, were clothed, and fed, and sheltered, and tenderly watched 
over. 

I know not that I have ever been so moved as 1 was in my pas- 
sage through that dining-room. It was not onl}’^ the pathos that lies 
in the helplessness of old age; I could not but think of the great 
compass of time these men’s experience embraced, of the, changes 
tliey had witnessed, of the sorrows and struggles which had made 
up the sum of their long lives, and how eighty and ninety years of 
privation, endurance, and such pleasures as sailors take, and such 
ambitions as sailors have, had ended in these bowed and toothless 
shapes, clutching at their plain repast with child-like selfishness, in- 
different as death itself to the great machine of life that was whirr- 
ing with its thousand interests outside the silent sphere of their 
present existence, and dependent for the bread their trembling hands 
raised to their poor old moutlis upon the bounty of those who love 
the noble profession of the sea, and who will not let the old and 
bruised and worn-out seamen want for such help as they can send 
him. Here and there were men too infirm to feed themselves; and 
1 took notice how thoughtfully their aged messmates prepared their 
meal for them. Some of those tlius occupied were more aged than 
the men they assisted. 

” Bless your honor, he’s but a child to me,'' said one of them, iu 


ROUisD THE GALLEY FIRE. 147 

answer to iny questions; “he’s but lliree-and-seventy, and I shall 
be eifflily-nine come next iSeptember.” 

One pitiful sight deeply aftected me. It was an old man stone 
deaf and stone blind. How is the lielplesness in his face to be con- 
veyed ? 

“lie’s losing his appetite fast,” said a seaman of about eighty 
who sat near him. “ His senses is all locked up. Ye never hear 
him speak.” 

There were sadder sights even than this; but I dare not trust my- 
self to write of them. 

1 followed the house-governor out of the dining-rooQis into a 
large apartment, well stored with books, magazines, etc., the gifts 
of friends of the charity. This 1 was told was the reading-room. 
It lo«)ked on to the green grounds, and was a most cheerful and de- 
lightful chamber. Further on was another room, furnished with 
bagatelle-boards and side tables for cribbage, etc. There was a 
particuhar cleanness and neatness everywhere visible, and 1 asked who 
did the work of the house. The house-governor answered, “ The 
inmates. The more active among them are put to washing down 
and dusting at ten o’clock, and they finish at twelve. Tliis is all 
the work required of them. Throughout the rest of the day they 
have nothing to do but to lounge about the grounds and amuse them- 
selves as they please in the bagatelle or reading-rooms, or in the 
smoking-room, which is a large apartment in the basement.” 
Mounting the wide stone staircase, and admiring as 1 wont the 
singularly handsome and lavishly embellished interior of the very 
fine building, I found myself on a floor devoted to the sleeping- 
rooms. These consist of rows of bulkheads partitioning oft little 
cabins, each with a door and a number, and furnished with a com- 
fortable bed, and some of them were movingly decorated by photo- 
graphs of a mother, a sister, a child, w ith humble memorials saved 
from the wreck of the jrast ; such relics of the old home as a few 
china, chimney-piece ornaments, a colored picture, and the like, 
with here and there a sea-chest; though, as a rule, these little 
cabins, as they are called, were conspicuously empty of all sugges- 
tions of marine life. How and again the opening of a door wmuld 
disclose an old man seated on his bed darning a sock or mending a 
shirt. It might have been that they w'cre used to the visits of 
strangers; but I could not help observing in all these old seamen an 
utter indifference to our presence and inspection, a look of deep ab- 
straction, as if their minds were leagues astern of them or far 
ahead, and existence were an obligation with which they had no 
sympathy, and of which they never took notice unless their atten- 
tion was compelled to it. 

“ Here,” said the governor, taking me intoaroom in which three 
or four old men were assembled — for dinner had been finished some 
time, and the seamen had quitted the tables—” is a veteran who has 
taught himself how to write. Show us your copy-book, my man,’’ 
said he, giving him his name. 

The old fellow produced his book with a great air of pride, and 1 
was struck by the excellence of the writing. 

“ Is this all your own doing?” 1 asked. 

“ Ay, sir, every stroke. It’s been a bit of a job, for you see when 


148 


EOUiTD THE GALLEY EIRE, 


a mau’s nearing eighty ye can’t say that his brain’s like a young 
’un’s.” 

“ This would shame many a youngster, nevertheless,” said 1. 

‘‘ I’d be prouder if 1 could read it, though,” he exclaimed, with 
the anxious and yet gentle expression that seemed a characteristic 
of the faees in this institution. 

” Ah, 1 see,” said I. “You can copy, hut cannot read what you 
copy. Never mind! that will come loo, presently.” 

“I’m afeard not,” said he, shaking his head. ” Writin’s one 
thing, readin’s another. 1 have learned to write, but dunno as ever 
1 shall be able to read it.” 

The governor, with an encouraging smile, told him to persevere, 
and then led the way to one of the sick-w^ards, where I found a very 
aged man in bed, and two others seated at a table. 

” That poor old fellow,” said he, pointing to the bed, “ begged 
to be allowed to attend the funeral of a man who died in the insti- 
tution a short time since; he was so much affected that he was 
struck with paralysis, and had to be carried back here. He was for 
years a ship-master, had command of several fine ships, and is a 
man of excellent education. He has been in this institution some 
years. And then, addressing him, ‘‘ Well, and how do you feel 
yourself now?” 

” Mending, sir, mending,” answered the old man. “ It’s death to 
me to be lying here. Why, for seventy-nine years 1 never had a 
day’s illness, never took a iia’porth of physic.” 

” You must have patience,” said the governor; “you’ll be up 
and doing presently.” 

“ Ay, the power of forereaching is not taken out of me yet,” he 
answered, breaking into a laugh, the heartiness of which somehow 
pained me more to hear than had he burst into sobs. 

There were more “ cabins” up-'stairs, and in one of them We 
found an old Irishman standing, lost in thought, looking out of the 
window. 1 addressed him, and he answered me in a rich brogue. 
I never remember meeting a more winning old face, nor being won 
by a voice more cordial and pleasant to hear. He told me he had 
been in the Kent, East Indiaman, when she was burned. This was 
so long ago as 1825, and he was then a hearty, able-bodied man. 
It was like turning back the pages of the history of England to hear 
him talk of that famous and dreadful disaster. 

“ There’s another man in the institution who was along with me 
in the Kent,” said he. 

I thought of the description given of the Kent by the master of 
the Caroline, as I looked at this ancient man. “Her appearance 
was that of an immense caldron or cage of buoyant basket-wmrk, 
formed of the charred and bi jckened ribs, naked, and stripped of 
every plank, encircling an uninteruupted mass of fiame.” Again 
and again had I read the story of that terrible fire at sea, thinking 
of it always as something deep-buried in history, and infinitely re- 
mote; and now here was a man who had been an actor in it, talltiug 
of it as if it had been but of yesterday, quavering out his “ saysl’s” 
and “ says he’s,” and eager to let me know that if he liked he could 
tell me something about the behavior of certain responsible persons 
on board that would not redound to their credit. It was pantaloon 


BOUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


149 


with harlequin’s wand in his hand; the faded old picture was 
touched, and became a live thiner, the seas rolling, the ship burn- 
ing, the terror and anguish of nearly sixty years since growing quick 
again under the magic of this ancient man’s memory, and in the 
presence ot a living witness of that long-decayed nfght of horror. 

Of such a charity as this of the Royal Alfred Aged Merchant 
Seamen’s Institution ho tv can any man who honors the English 
sailor and values his calling hope to speak in such terms of praise 
as shall not seem hyperbolical? Not for one instant will I say that 
as a charity it is superior to others which deal with the sick^ with 
the destitute, wdth the infirm, with little children. 

“ There is misery enough in every corner of the world as well as 
within our convent,” Sterne’s monk is made to imply by his cordial 
wave of the hand. But I do claim for this institution the posses- 
sion of a peculiar element of pathos such as no man w^ho has not 
beheld the aged, the stricken, the helpless, the broken-down meh 
congregated w ithin its walls, can form any idea of. As you survey 
them, their past arises; you think of the black and stormy night, 
the frost and snow, the famine and the shipwreck — all the perils 
which sailors encounter in their quest or carriage of that which 
makes us great and prosperous as a nation; and then reflections on 
the dire ending which must have befallen these tempest-beaten, 
time-laden men but for the charity that provides them with a refuge, 
break in upon you, and you feel that no words of praise can be itoo 
high for such an institution, and that no money dedicated by gener- 
ous hearts to the alleviation of human suffering can be better 
directed than to the exchequer of this aged seamen’s home. Ninety- 
three old sailors are at present lodged in the institution. The house 
is big enough to accommodate two hundred, but the funds of the 
charity are already stretched to their last limits, and many an old 
and broken-down seaman who this home would otherwise receive, 
and whose closing days would be rendered happy by all that tender 
ministration, by all that pious kindness can effect, must die in the 
cold and cheerless silence of the Union, unless the charity that is 
prayerfully entreated for him is given. 


ON TEE 000DW1N8. 

On a fine calm day, from the height of the cliffs betwixt Ramsgate 
and Broadslairs you may spy at low-water time a yellow vein, like 
a ihin winding of pale gold,"a hand’s-breadth this aide of the hori- 
zon— the famous and fatal Goodwin Sands. 1 suppose there is no 
shoal in the whole world that a man whose sympathies are with 
sailors can view with more interest. Starting from the North Sand 
Head, which is almost abreast of Ramsgate, and looking east, the 
eye follows the south-westerly sweep of the Goodwins until the 
Downs are embraced, with all their dim tracery of spars and rig- 
ging and faint sinuous lines of steamers’ smoke beyond, while the 
giant South Foreland acclivity stares down upon the light-ship 
abreast of St. Margaret’s Bay, marking the extreme limits in the 
south and west of the deadliest stretch of sands upon the face of 
the globe. ^ 


150 


ROUXD THE GALLEY FIRE. 


Who cau view the Goodwins without tliioUinc: of the treasurer 
which lie buried in their heart, of the hundreds of ships which have 
gone to pieces upon them, ot the thousands of human corpses which 
have floated out of their flashing surf to be stranded upon some 
distant beach, or to drift, maybe for days, upon the bosom of the 
tides, looking up with blind faces to heaven through the green 
transparent lid of their sea-coffin? There is no spot that lias ever 
been the theater of wilder human suffering. Again and again, as 
you sail past, you see forking up out of them some black gibbet- 
like relic of a wreck a week, a fortnight, a month old. Something 
ot the kind is always visible, as though even on the tenderest of 
summer days, when the blue water sleeps around, and the heavens 
are a violet hollow, with a rayless sun making gold of the sea in 
the west, the deadly suggestiveness of that long sweep of yellow sand 
should be as plain as when its presence is denoted amid the black 
tempestuous night by the ghastly gleam of boiling white waters. 

1 remember once passing these Goodwins, and seeing a number 
of little black figures running about them. A pleasure vessel from 
one of the adjacent ports was lying at anchor a short distance oft, 
and her boat was against the slope of the shoal. It was a very calm 
day indeed; the sea just blurred here and there with small draughts 
of air that gave the water in those places a look of ice, with a pallid 
streak of the French coast beyond the white main-sail of the pleas- 
ure-cutter, hove up by the refraction of the light above the sea- 
line. 1 brought a small pocket telescope to bear, and observed that 
those little black figures running about like the savages Robinson 
Crusoe saw were Cockney excursionists engaged in playing cricket. 
They played as if they wanted to be able to talk ot having played 
rather than as if they enjoyed the game. Talk of contrasts! A 
man may be rendered pensive by watching children sporting in a 
graveyard, by mingling in a festivity held upon a space of ground 
where once a famous battle was fought, and where the feet of the 
merry-makers are separated from the bones and skulls of warriors 
by a couple of spades’ -length of earth. But to see those little black- 
coated creatures running about after a ball on top of such an ocean 
burial-place that the lil^ie of it for the horror of its annals and for 
the number of those it has sepulchered is not to be found in this 
habitable world, might well have made the gayest heart sad and 
thoughtful for a spell. 

As 1 leaned over the rail, looking at those happy pygmies — those 
lords of creation who, viewed half a mile further away, might have 
passed for a handful of black crabs crawling about — the scene in 
imagination changed, the darkness came rushing out of the cast 
with a moan of approaching storm, the three lanterns winked like 
stars beyoml the North Sand Head, and there was a sound of welter- 
ing waters and the seething and hissing of surf rising up through 
the gloom out from the whole length of the shoals. The wind 
rose fresh and eagerly, with a raw edge in it; the ebony of the 
swelling water was broken by the glimmer of the froth of breaking 
seas. 1 could hear the muffled thunder of the confused play to 
windward of the surf, with the shrieking of the blast overhead, while 
a deeper shadow yet gathered in the air. Then, with a blinking of 
my eyes, back would come the facts of the thing again, and jmnder 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRR. 151 

were the little figures merrily chasing the ball, the sea spreading 
like a sheet of silk to the yellow rim of the hard sand, and the blue 
sky bright overhead. Yet another touch of the magician Fancy’s 
wand, and it was all howling storm and flying blackness and the 
steam of hurling spume again, with a sudden glare of lightning be- 
tween, flinging out the shapes of the piles of whirling clouds, like 
monstrous brandished wings going to pieces in tiie hurricane, and 
throwing up the black fabric of a big ship on her beam-ends, her 
masts gone, arid a fury of white water veiling her. 

There are life-boat coxswains wflio need but close their eyes to 
see fearfuller things. Just where those little creatures are brandish- 
ing their tiny bats, and flourishing their shrimp-like legs, the great 
ship struck, and four hundred men and women shrieked out to God 
for mercy in one breath. A man’s fancy must be feeble even on the 
softest of summer days not to hear the crash of her timbers, the 
thunder-shocks of the smiting seas, the rending noises of hemp and 
wire and spar torn by the tempest from their strong fastenings; not 
to see the ghastly picture she makes in the wild gleam of the signal 
flare, whose tongues of Are arc blowm horizontal, like streaming 
flags, by the furious breath of the storm, illuminating wuth a dull, 
horrible crimson light the throngs of human beings who cry and 
struggle upon her decks, or hang, like streaming suits of clothes, 
in what remains of her rigging. 

Is this an exaggerated picture? Alas! the pen never yet was 
wielded that could portray, in the barest form, any one of the 
countless horrible scenes which have taken place on that stretch of 
sands where one summer day I watched, leaning over the rail of 
a vessel, a number of light-hearted excursionists playing cricket. 

Among the things which never can be known may be placed the 
thoughts which possess a man in the moment of shipwreck. Of the 
hundreds of published narratives none satisfies the reader; and of 
those who relate their experiences, how infinitely remote from the 
truth do their statements strike them as being when they put what 
they have written side by aide with what they remember having 
felt! The reason is, I take it, because in no other situation is death 
more awful than upon the sea. It is commonly slow — at least, it 
gives time for anguish to become full-blown— and the hopeof rescue 
must be very strong indeed, and w’^ell founded, to qualify that agony 
• >f expectation, sinking into paralyzing despair, which confounds 
md, in a manner, stuns a person stranded far out upon the water 
HI a black night, seeing nothing but the glare of lightning or the 
spectral flashing of froth flying past, hearing nothing but the grind- 
ing and 1,rembling and desolating noises of the hull upon the 
ground. 

It is supposed, because sailors cannot or do not describe the 
horrors they pass through, that they lack the capacity of expression. 
But you may put the most eloquent writer now living, call him by 
what name you please, on board a ship foundering amid a tempest, 
or going to pieces in a storm on such a shoal as the Goodwins or 
the Sunk Sand, and when he has been long enough rescued and 
ashore to recover the use of his brains, you may defy him to write 
such a narrative of the disaster as will come, to his own conscience 
and memory, one jot nearer to the truth than the newspaper para- 


152 


KOUJS'l) THE GALLEY FIIIE> 


granh of five lines in which the wreck was chronicled. A man can 
describe what he has suilered in a railway collision, in a house on 
fire, down in a mine where there has been an explosion, in a theater 
where there has been a panic; but put him aboard a ship, and let 
him clearly understand that he is going to be drowned, and when 
succcored he can tell 3 on little more than that the waves ran 
mountains high, that some people were brave, and that some people 
shrieked, and that what he best remembers* is catching hold of 
something, and hearing the waters in his ears, and being dragged 
into a boat. 

Very true is the old saying, “ If you want to learn how to pray, 
you must go to sea.” So distracting, so paralyzing^ so utter I3" de- 
spairful are all the conditions of shipwreck in its worst forms, that 
1 cannot but think, when a man is known to act bravely and coolly 
in that situation, unmindful of himself, thinking of others, en- 
couraging and heartening them, the heroism he exhibits is of a^kmd 
not to be matched by any kind of courage a man may show in a 
position that lacks the overwhelming features wdiich distingush the 
foundering or the stranding of a ship. 

Some days ago I met a seaman who had made one of the crew of 
a brig that a few months since was stranded on the Goodwin Sands, 
and went to pieces there. The circumstances of the wreck were so 
recent that 1 was sure it could not but be a very sharp, clear 
memory in this sailor; and, wanting to hear what sort of thoughts 
come into a man’s head at such a time, and how he will act, what 
kind of impulses govern him, and the like, I carried this mariner 
to where a seat and a glass of beer were to be had, and conversed 
with him. 

” She was a wessel,” said he, ” of two hundred and twenty ton, 
and we was in ballast, bound from Can (Caen) to Seaham. All went 
well, nothen particular happening, 1 mean, till we comes abreast' 0’ 
the South Foreland. It might then be twelve o’clock in the middle 
o’ the night. The weather was as thick as mud, plenty of rain driv- 
ing along, and the wind west, blowin’ a fresh breeze. We was 
under upper and lower main-tops’l, lower fore-topc’I and foresail.” 

Here he took a drink. 

” And the weather as thick as mud, you say?” 

‘‘Ay, thick as mud in a wine-glass. The Sou’ San’head light 
was on our starboard beam, and ye may guess how clear it was when 
I tell you that that light took a deal of peering at to make out. As 
to the East Good’in, why, all that way was black as my boot; not 
the merest glimmer to betoken a light-wessel there. 1 was at the 
side, heavin’ the lead, getting nine fathom, and then seven, and 
then eight, and then seven again. Right fair betwixt the Callipers 
and the Deal coast I’ll allow ye’b get eleven and twelve fathom 
good till you come on to past the Downs— headin’ up, I mean — 
and then it shoals down to height and seven and five and a ’arf. 
So in a night as black as a dead wall, when there’s no moon, who’s 
‘to know, when the last light seen has drawed out of view, and 
there's ne’er anoiher to be sighted, where you are in that water? 
We was going along tidy fast, when a squall of rain drives right up 
over our starn in a wild smother, and I had just made sevea 


EOU^^D THE GALLEY EIRE. 


153 


fathom by the lead when the wessel took the ground, chucking me 
off the rail on to the deck. The skipper begins to bawl out like 
mad, ‘Let go the main-torps’l lialyanis! Haul up the foresail! 
Let go the—’ Wash at that moment comes a lump of sea right over 
the port quarter, canlin our starn to the south’ard and smotherin’ 
the decks. You didn’t want to see — you could feel that the brig 
was hard and fast, though as the sea thumped her she’d kinder 
sway on her keel.” 

Here he took another drink. 

” Well?” said 1. 

” Well,” he continued, ” what was to do now, master? Every- 
thing being let go aloft, the canvas was slatting like thunder up 
there — and though I’m not goin’ to tell you it was blowing a gale 
ot wind, yet it seemed to come twice as hard the moment we took 
the ground, and the seas to rise as if our falling helpless on a sudden 
had swelled ’em up with joy. We lay with our head about nor’- 
east, and over the starboard bow you could see the white water 
jumping. But that was all that was visible. The wind seemed to 
blow up the thickness all round us, there was not a light to be 
seen, and looKing around anywhere away from the white water 
was like putting your head in a pitch-kettle. Cold 1 Master, that 
was the worst part of it. I’ll allow that in all silivations of this 
kind the cold’s the part that’s hardest to bear. Somehow danger 
ain’t so frightful when it’s w^arm. Can’t explain it, I’m sure; 
matter o’ constitootion, perhaps; but I doubt it ye’d find much 
bravery among the Hesquimos and the Roosians up near the pole, 
and the likes o’ them. Can’t see how it’s possible; but it’s only 
my ’pinion.” 

Another drink. 

“Well,” he continued, holding up the fresh glass of ale I had 
ordered for him to the light, with alooKof pensiveness in one blood- 
shot eye he kept open, ” we tarns to and makes a flare — a sort o’ 
bonfire. But if we couldn’t see anything, who was to see us? 
How ever, we kept all on burning flares, while first the foretop-gall’n- 
mast came down with a run, causing us all to jump aft out of the 
road, and then the main-topmast carries away at the cap, and falls 
with a roar over the side, and set us all running forrard. 1, for 
one, made up my mind w'e was all to be drowned, 1 couldn’t see 
no help for it. The noise of them spars cracking and tumbling 
away in the blackness overhead, and the shind}’^ set up by the slat- 
ting canvas, along with the creaking of the hull and the washing of 
the w'ater that came as white as milk over the starboard rail, was 
enough, 1 reckon, to make any man suppose his time had come, 
and that his ehost was to be turned out of him. However, we took 
heart afttr a spell, by noticing that the seas burst with less weight 
as the tide leH us, though every butt in her must have yawned open 
after she had been grinding a while, for she was full of water, and 
a few hours more of such dusting w^as bound to have made staves 
of her. Well, at about half-past four o’clocU in the morning, we 
being by that time pretty near froze to death, the w^eather thinned 
down, and we caught sight of the Gull Light shining— about three 
miles off, I dare say. What was to be seen of our wessel was just 
a fearful muddle; masts overboard, washing along-side, the lower 


154 


llOUKD THE GALLEY EIRE. 

masts working in her like loose teeth with every heave, decks full 
of raffle, and the water ever}’ now and again flying over us, as though 
detarrcined if it couldn’t w’ash us overboard it w’ould keep us 
streamin’ w^et. When we spied the Gull Light we turned to and 
made another flare, and presently they sent up a rocket; and to cut 
this yarn short,” coniinued he, having by this time emptied his 
second tumbler, and flnding me slow in offering him a third, just 
as the light was a-breakin’ in the east, one of us sings out that there 
was a steamer heddin’ for us, and when the mornin’ grew stronger 
we spied a tug making for us with a life-boat in tow. Well, by ^ 
this time there w’as little enough sea, and the life-boat, letting go 
of the tug, came along-side, but two of our men were so badly 
froze up that they had to be lifted into her, and such had been our 
sufferings, though I’m not going to say they equaled what others 
had gone through on those cussed sands, that w’e couldn’t have 
looked worse, with sal^ in our eyes and our faces washed into the 
appearance of tallow, had w’e been spendin’ forty-eight hours on 
that shoal. We lost all our clothes, every bloomin’ thinir w^e had 
with us; and that same forenoon, just afore twelve o’clock, half a 
gale of wind sprung up, and by tw'o o’clock there was nothing to 
be seen of the brig. ” 

” And that’s the story,” said 1. 

” That’s it,” he answered; “ every word gospel true.” 

“ How did the others behave,” said I, ” in this awful situation? 
Pretty well?” 

” It was too dark to see,” he answered. 

Did you encourage one another?” 

“ Well,” he replied, ” the cook at first kept on singin’out, ‘ Wn’ra 
all drownded men! Lord have mercy on me!’ and the like of that, 
until the cold look away his voice. 1 don’t know that there was 
any other sort o’ encouragement.” 

‘‘And what were your feelings,” said 1, ‘‘when the brig took 
the ground and the water washed over her?” 

‘‘ My feelings?” he replied. ‘‘ Why, that we was in a bloomin’ 
mess. That was my feelings.” 

” How did the prospect of death affect you— 1 mean the idea of 
being' swept into the black water and strangling there?” 

“ Are you chaffin’ me, sir?” he asked. 

‘‘ Certainly not,” said 1. 

“ AVell,” he said, grinning, ‘‘ I’m blessed it 1 was asked such a 
question as that afore. It’s like a meetin’-house question.” 

‘‘ Didn’t you think at all?” said 1. 

‘‘Tes,” he answered; ‘‘1 thought what a jblly fool 1 was to be 
ashore on the Good’ins on a winter’s night, L^radually dyia’ of frost, 
instead of bein’ in a w^arm bed ashore, with a parlor to lake break- 
fast in when I woke up. That’s about it, sir.” 


ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


155 


THE SIBANGEBS' HOME. 

A PLAIN red-brick building stands in the West India Dock Road, 
■with the following lengthy name or description written along the 
front ot it; “ The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans, and 
South-sea Islanders.” On the day 1 visited this house there were 
three or four people standing on the doorsteps, with faces which 
did more in an instant to express the character of the place than 
could have been effected by reams of reports of the annual meetings 
and descriptive pamphlets. They were, it is needless to say, per- 
sons of color, and of very decided color too: one as black as a hat, 
another of a muddy yellow, a third a gloomy brown. They were 
dressed in European clothes; they might have belonged to nations 
which were in a high state of civilization when the Thames was clean 
water, and rolled its silver stream through aland whose scanty pop- 
ulation hung loose and unclothed among the trees; but for all that, 
they had the look of wild men in breeches, and the very black per- 
son needed little more than a boomerang or a bow and arrows to 
give him the aspect at least of an unsafe object. 1 had, however, 
but little time to inspect these men, for a commotion in the hall of 
the building, coupled with an assemblage of some dozen or twenty 
people on the street pavement, called my attention to a spectacle of 
real interest. This consisted of the starting ot a troupe of Javanese 
musicians for the place ot entertainment where they were then per- 
forming. There were a number of men and tour women— at least, 
1 think there were four women; yet it is possible that 1 may have 
mistaken a man for one of the ot’lier sex, for some ot the men and 
women were very much alike, especially the men. They streamed 
out in a great hurry, their bright black eyes sparkling in their 
brown faces, the men smoking short pipes of a decidedly West 
India Dock Road pattern, and the women bundling along in such 
queer raiment that it would be as hopeless to attempt to describe 
its colors and cut as to catalogue the stock of a rag-and-bottle mer- 
chant. A kind of large private omnibus stood at the door, into 
which these strange people got, some ot them climbing upon the root; 
and striking indeed was the appearance ot the windows ot the vehi- 
cle, framing, as they did, every one otthem, a dark, contented face, 
■w'hile the root of the omnibus was crowded with blacks and whites, 
like the keys of a piano-forte. 

” Who are those people?” said 1 to a Chinaman, as the omnibus 
rolled away. 

” Hey?” answered John. 

” Those people,” 1 said, pointing toward the retreating vehicle; 
“ they are not sailors, are they? There are women among them,” 

“No, no, not sailor, no, no,” cried the Chinaman, with great 
enrnestness, and wagging his head so violently that he nearly shook 
Lis hat oft. ” Music-man, not sailor; play tic-a tic, tic-a-tic;” and 
here he screwed an imaginary fiddle into his throat, and fell to saw- 
ing the air with his elbow. 


156 


R0U1^"D THE GALLEY FIRE. 


At tliis moment 1 was joined by the secretary— a ^^entleman; let 
me eay at once, who, after spendins: many years of his life in In- 
dia, is now gratuitously devoting his services to the poor Asiatic 
who finds himselt homeless in this great wilderness of London, of- 
ten penniless, and speaking a tongue with which he may journey 
from Mile End Gate to Hammersmith without finding an ear capa- 
ble ot comprehending a word he says. This gentleman told mo 
who those queer-looking people were, how they were in <;harge ot a 
Dutch entrepreneur, and how they were “ putting-up” at the Stran- 
gers’ Home because there, and at no other place in London, they 
were likely to meet people who, even it they did not speak their 
language, would impart a sense of home. 

We now proceeded to inspect the building. As at the Well Street 
Sailors’ Home, so here, the common room, it 1 may so term it, is 
the central hall, a large place furnished with seats and tables, and 
heated by an immense stove. Here of an evening, when it is cold 
or damp out-of-doors, the inmates of the Home assemble, and the 
bright lamps shed their light upon as many diverse countenances 
and costumes as there are nationalities to the eastw^ard of Russia 
and in the great oceans which wash the Capes ot Africa and South 
America. Strange, indeed, is he admixture loan European eye: 
the Hindoo sitting cross-leggcu on a bench listening, with dusky 
eyes rolling in his black attenuated features, to the pigeon-Euglish 
of a round-faced Chinaman; a Malay endeavoring by gestures to 
make himself understood by a Kanaka; a native ot Ceylon smiling 
over the porcine gutturals ot a couple ot Zulus; with here an Arab 
reis pacing the floor in lonely dignity, or a red man of a paternity 
indistinguishable in his features, which seem compounded of the 
Nubian, the last of the Mohicans, a dash of Polynesia, with a hint 
of Liverpool or Bristol, spelling over a volume full ot murky and 
eye-confounding hieroglyphics. 

“ When this hall is full the sight is a remarkable one,” said the sec- 
retary. ‘‘ What with the hum of the strange languages — perhaps 
as many as twenty all going at once — together with the various 
faces and clothes, 1 assure you it needs no small effort of mind to 
convince one’s self that one is still in London, and that just out-of- 
doors omnibuses are rolling, small boys calling out the evening pa- 
pers, and policemen standing at the corners.” 

1 felt the force of this, thinlj’- peopled as the hall was, when 1 
stood in it gazing around. Was it the strange ha\inting Eastern 
smells— vague fumes, as of a hubble-bubble recently smoked out; a 
lingering whiff as of curry; a thin, ghostly odor of bamboos, chil- 
lies, oil, nutmeg, and cedar-wood? or was it the turban, the pigtail, 
the almond-shaped eye, the black, bronze, and yellow skins of the 
few Asiatics who were seated in a body on a center bench, that car- 
ried my imagination out of the West India Dock Road into the 
tangled forests, the hct, blue heavens, the joss-houses, the sampans 
and junks, the rushing rivers, the jackals, the dusky figures, the 
blue gowns and red or yellow shoes of the distant, spacious prov- 
inces of the sun? Hark to the sing-song chatter babbling from that 
Mongolian visage! What is the magic of it, that this hall, gloomy 
with the smoke of the great city bio wing river ward, should be 
transformed into a shining Eastern city, whose shores, rich with 


ROUKD THE GALLEY FIRE. 157 

the green of tropical vegetation, are washed by a sea whose breast 
reflects a heaven of sapphire? The voice ceases; the spell is broken; 
the muftied roar of the toiling world outside breaks in and establishes 
one of the very sharpest contrasts in life — that of the condition of 
an Asiatic, fresh from the hot suns and thick jungles of his own 
country, plunged amid the smoke, the turmoil, the unspeakable 
odors of the east end of London, incapable of making his wants 
known, languishing in misery and cold in the gloom of railway 
arches of some unfrequented court, feeling what solitude is in a 
sense never imagined by Byron. For the Asiatic’s loneliness is that 
of the dumb brute; helms a language, but he might as well be voice- 
less; and, worst of all, he is the victini of the unnatural, ignorant, 
and wicked prejudices which finds in the colored skin nothing but 
what is fit for derision, contempt, and cruel neglect. This was the 
lot of the Eastern stranger, before a number of humane Englishmen 
banded themselves together to furnish him with a refuge. 1 own 
that the fine humanity of this institution affected me so strongly as 
1 stood looking at the knot of dark-visaged, strangely appareled 
men, and considered what would be their fate if this Home were not 
at hand to help them, to receive them, to interpret their wants, 
and to assist them to return to their native countries. Time was 
when few tragedies were commoner than that of the finding of the 
body of some colored man who had made his way as a sailor or 
stoker to London, been robbed by the beasts of prey who wander 
hungrily round the dockyard gates, and had lain himself down in 
some corner of this opulent city to die of cold and hunger. Such 
horrors are things of the past, and honored be those and the mem- 
ory of those who have made them so. No Asiatic stranger need 
perish for the want of a friend in London now. The Home will re- 
ceive him, and for a very moderate sum — which he ma}’’ easily pay 
either from the wages due to him from the ship he leaves, or by the 
note advanced by the owners whose ship he joins— teed and lodge 
him, and spare no trouble to restore him to his own country. Hence, 
to a large extent, the institution contributes to its own support. But 
the charges it makes are so small, the losses it incurs tlirough the 
new allotment or bonus notes are so frequent, and the cases of abso- 
,lute destitution it deals with so numerous, that it is bound to con- 
tinue to be dependent upon outside help to a certain extent; and 1 
believe that no one who has any knowledge of the work it is do- 
ing, no one with sympathy tor the helpless of his own species, but 
will admit that there is not an institution in existence that better 
deserves the gifts of the charitable than this Home for Asiatic 
Strangers. 

But all this time 1 am leaving the obliging and kind-hearted sec- 
retaiy waiting to show me over the premises. We pass out, first of 
all, into a space of open ground at the back of the building, of 
which a substantial piece has been converted into a flower-garden. 
This the superintendent of the Home who has joined us, contem- 
plates for a M hile with silent satisfaction, and then, with consider- 
able pride, draws my attention to it. 

“It has all been done within the last two or three years,” he says. 
” The Asiatics lend a hand, find old seeds knocking about the 
bottom cf their chests, and plant them, but they never come to 


158 


liOUN^D THE GALLEY' PIKE. 


anything. They won’t grow, you know, in this climate. Here’s a 
sample,” he says, pointing to a row of shoots which look like the 
first buddings of that patriotic vegetable the leek; “they were 
planted three days ago, by those Javanese women you saw, and this 
is what they’ve already come to. But 1 suspect they’ll end at 
that.” 

A balcony runs at the back of the house, and along it there was 
stumping a John Canoe, smoking something str.^nge, whether a 
pipe, or cigarette, or piece of cane, I could not tell. He vanished 
throuuh a door when we mounted the steps, which 1 regrelted, as I 
should like to have examined the thing he had in his mouth. 

” This,” said the secretary, on our re-entering the building, “ is 
what we call the firemen’s dormitory.” Tt was a large room, with 
a bulkhead dividing it, and on either hand of the bulkhead went a 
row of narrow beds furnished with coarse coverlets and mattresses 
stuffed with fiber. There was no carpet, and 1 ventured to ask the 
reason, as the bare boards had but a cheerless look. 

“ Carpet!” exclaimed the secretary; ‘‘my dear sir, these Asiatics 
wouldn’t know what to do with sucli a thing. They’d pull it up and 
make trousers of it. You cannot conceive the strangeness of their 
habits and customs. Vor instance, to give them a table-cloth would 
be like ill-treating them. Nothing bothers them more than a fork, 
and you may see them eating eggs with clasp-knives, which they 
pull out of their pockets.” Then, seeing me eying the beds, he 
continued, ‘‘ It would hardly do to give the firemen fine linen to lie 
in. Sir, they arrive here thick with grime, they foul whatever they 
touch, and it takes several days of hard bathing to clean them.” 

There were several of these dormitories, each of them divided by 
bulkheads, uncarpeted, and containing the same kind of bedsteads, 
every one bearing a number at its head. The Javanese troupe oc- 
cupied one of these dormitories, the men sleeping on one side of the 
bulkhead and the women on the other. I looked for their luggage, 
but could find nothing but a fiddle and an old sword. I think, if the 
public had seen where these musicians sleep, they would reckon the 
sight stranger than any other part of the performance these Eastern 
people were giving. There is one dormitory, however, up-stairs filled 
with cabins similar to what they have at the old Sailors’ Home at 
Belvedere. These are occupied, 1 was told, by the better class of' 
Asiatics. 

‘‘ And who might they be?” 1 asked. 

“Why,” I was told, “Japanese otfictrs, stewards, Chinese car- 
penters, native doctors, and the like.” 

These are the “ dignity men.” They have a little room in which 
they may dine apart from the Lascars, Kanakas, John Chinamen, 
and the others; but, somehow, they don’t seem to value exclusive- 
ness, for most of them will quit their table to join the pigtails and 
half-castes in the big eating-room down-stairs, where they find a 
relish in their rice and fish which appears to be wanting in the 
dishes in the other apartment. In one of the dornlitories we came 
across a Javanese— one of the troupe — sitting cross-legged on his 
bed, ill with a cold in the head. His unsmoked pipe lay by his 
side, and he w'as listlessly handling some pieces of printed calico, 
though the use he meant to put them to 1 could not divine. There 


liOltND THE GALLEY FIRE. 


159 


is a no more melancholy object than a colored man sufferiuo: from 
a bad cold in the head. I saw him shiver, and then roll his eyes — 
black as ebony set in orange — upon tlie window, and I thought to 
my Belt, “ How this harmless colored man, who speaks nothing but 
Javanese and who belongs to a country where the air is radiant 
with beautiful birds, and fragrant with delicious fruits, must enjoy 
the climate of the West India Dock Road?” 

We struggled to impart sympathy by several kinds of gestures 
and motions, but it would not do; we could not get further than 
alarming him, and so we left him. In another dormitory we found 
a Ceylon man, a Madrassee Lascar, and a Japanese. The Ceylon 
man was a very handsome fellow, his hair parted down the middle, 
and he had as flue a pair of eyes as ever I saw in the human coun- 
tenance, regular features, and a wonderfully good figure. He was 
reading an English book, and spoke English, so well that, what 
with his correct utterance, the color of his skin, and his striking 
face, a misgiving seized me. 

** Are you a pure Cingalese?” I asked. 

” Ko, no,” cried he, with much anxiety in his manner; ” my 
father was an English sailor!” 

But the Madrassee man, in a measure atoned for this disappoint- 
ment. He was the real thing — just the sort of c<'nformatiou to 
tumble about in a surf -boat, very black, very loan, with snow- 
white teeth, and a high, long nose as thin as a hatchet. The secre- 
tary conversed with him in his native lingo, and it seemed to do 
the poor fellow good to talk. The Japanese had a wooden face, and 
had very little to say. Indeed, I always think that the people of his 
race and the (Jhinese view us and our works with a good deal of 
contempt. What a mean opinion they must have of our toys, of our 
paintings, in which the literal is sacrificed to the poetical; of our 
clothes, lea, head-dresses, coiffures, and a thousand other matters! 
They have a Chinese porter at^the Home, who is dressed in a black 
coat and wears a hat. 1 did not speak to him, but 1 should judge 
from observing: the expression on his face when in a state of repose, 
that he has but a poor opinion of Gri'eat Britain. In another dor- 
mitory were a couple of Arabs mending shirts; and dowu-slairs, in 
the scullery, I met a Zulu, who told me that he was a subject of 
Cetewayo, and had called at that King’s lodgings when lie was in 
London, but had not managed to see his Majesty. One of the suite 
promised to write and appoint an hour for an interview; but no 
letter ever reached the youth, and the next thing he heard of Cete- 
wayo was that he had sailed tor Africa. This scullery led into a 
large kitchen, very well appointed, and in spick-and-span condi- 
tion. Adjoining was the provision room, containing one large sack 
of rice, a quantity of smoked herrings, a jar of chillies, another jar 
of curry powder, and othev Eastern relishes. 

“ The mackerel is the favorite dish with our inmates, be they of 
whatever nationality they will,” said the secretary. “ Tliey con- 
sider it the finest fish that is caught in European waters, and la- 
ment when the season for catching them is over.” 

I asked what food they were supplied with in the Home. 

“ We have,” he replied, ” what we call three messes. The first- 
class mess is sixteen shillings a week— this includes a separate 


160 


HOUND THE GALLEY EIHE. 


cabin; the second, without a cabin, is fourteen shillings; and the 
third, which we term the curr 3 '-aud-rice mess, is ten shillings. The 
first two messes comprise, for breakfast, fish or eggs, co0ee, bread 
and butter; for dinner we give beef or mutton, with vegetables, 
and curry and rice always; tea the same as breakfast,’’ 

“ The charge is small enough.” said I. 

” But they have other privileges,” said he. ” For instance, there 
are hot and cold water baths down- stairs, for the use of which no 
cl»arge is made. We also receive and take care of their money and 
valuables— for some of the people who come here bring real val- 
uables, such as jew’els, with them, 1 assure you. Since last Jan- 
uary the amount deposited in money with us has amounted to 
£2,285, of which 1 do not scruple to say that, but for the existence 
of this Home, the greater p(»rtion would have been stolen from its 
owners by the crimps and boarding-house people who haunt our 
neighborhood. That room you see there is our shipping-office; cap- 
tains come to us and select men for their vessels, and when the 
choice has been made we accompany the men to the marine offices, 
see them sign articles, and that tiie advance is duly made. Indeed, 
we do all that we possibly can to help and protect these poor 
strangers.” 

” What 1 have seen assures me of that,” said I. 

” This,” he continued, as we went up-stairs and entered a large, 
cheerful dormitory, ” is what we cal! the a 3 ’^abs’ room. It is meant 
for native women who are brought home as nurses and discharged. 
Sad cases of destitution are often occurring. Not long ago a City 
missionary found a native woman in an empty house in Shepherd’s 
Bush. He brought her here, and, having learned the name of her 
mistress, we w'ent to her, and were told that the ayah was insane, 
that she had been kept as long as possible, had at last refused to go, 
and was accordingly turned out. We took charge of her fora while, 
but her madness increased, and we were forced at last to send her 
to a county asylum, where she now remains. 

The inspection of this room exhausted all that was to be seen ; so, 
bidding the cordial secretary farewell, and taking a lingering look 
at a knot of dusky men who were talking in the hall, 1 quitted this 
hospitable and most valuable institution, resolving to record all 
that I had heard and viewed, in the earnest hope that of those by 
whom this record of my visit will be read some mav be induced to 
help an excellent charity by sending donations to the manager of the 
Strangers’ Home, West India Dock Road, London. 


THE ESSD. 


The Seaside Library — Pocket Edition. 

(CONTINUED FllOm SECOND PAGE OF COVER.) 


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